the sensonic was really silly. They had a servo motor push/retract the clutch slave cylinder if the driver moved the gearstick.
The advantage of the floor mounted ignition in my opinion only is that its a royal and total PITA to work on if you were trying to steal the car. The other advantage is that your ignition does not wear out by the "aasum" 50 kg keychain hanging on it. The mention of the gearshift lock is more clearly explained this way.
to take the key out of a manual gear SAAB, you have to shift it to reverse, only then can you rotate the key to lock, with automatic, the lock applies only in Park. - But who in their right minds drives an automatic SAAB. Manual gear + SAAB 9000 Aero is really really fun (not in summer - the A/C is useless)