The problem of integral saturation greatly restricts the engineering application of PID controller in AC speed regulator systems, which also affects the control performance of sensorless drive system with the phase-locked loop (PLL) structure. To address this, this paper proposes a novel variable-proportion desaturation PI (VPDPI) control method for permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) sensorless drive system. Firstly, an overall scheme of sensorless control system with sliding mode observer (SMO)-PLL observer is presented, which includes the equivalent mathematical model and its parameter identification model of PMSM. Secondly, the control principle of the VPDPI algorithm is innovatively designed. Note that the novel regulator scheme consists of two interconnected components in terms of the concepts of threshold segmentation, i.e., the variable-proportion link and desaturation PI part. Meanwhile, the stability analysis of the regulator is further discussed by the root locus and the Bode diagram analysis. Finally, the numerical simulations of speed regulation are carried out under the various operation conditions, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is further verified by experimental platform. Several groups of comparative experiments reveal that the proposed method has a more higher control performance for the sensorless drive system, especially in the ability of overshoot suppression.