Apal is a small-scale automobile company originally from Belgium.
Phase 1 -APAL - s.à.r.l. Application Polyester Armé de Liège (1961–1998)
Glass-fibre specialist ''Edmond Pery'' founded this small
automobile
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...
manufacturing company in
Blegny
Blegny (, before 2001: Blégny; wa, Blegné) is a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality of Wallonia located in the Liège Province, province of liège, Belgium.
On January 1, 2006, Blegny had a total population of 12,799. The total area is 2 ...
-Trembleur,
Liège Province
Liège (; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is the easternmost province of the Wallonia region of Belgium.
Liège Province is the only Belgian province that has borders with three countries. It borders (clockwise from the north) the Du ...
,
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
in 1961. Pery presented his first model, a GT coupé with
gull-wing door
In the automotive industry, a gull-wing door, also known as a falcon-wing door or an up-door, is a car door that is hinged at the roof rather than the side, as pioneered by Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, first as a race car in 1952 ( W194), and then a ...
s, propelled by
Volkswagen
Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...
or
Porsche
Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, usually shortened to Porsche (; see #Pronunciation, below), is a German automobile manufacturer specializing in high-performance sports cars, SUVs and sedans, headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany ...
engines at the Brussels ''Autosalon'' (or ''Salon auto de Bruxelles'') in 1962.
In 1965, Apal started producing a Formule V single-seater. The Apal Horizon GT was a mid-engined sports car and was made in a limited number in 1968 and 1969.
Between 1968 and 1981, about 5,000 glass-fibre bodies were produced for different
buggy models such as Apal Buggy, Apal Rancho, Apal Jet, Apal Auki, and the Apal Corsa (a sporty version with gull-wing doors).
The Jet was a copy of a buggy originally developed by Glassco Inc. of USA. This set of molds then made its way to England, where PABC/Eresbug built it in London, with the Four Seasons Buggy Company manufacturing it from 1971 on and finally
GP Projects from 1975 until 1976. Apal traded the Auki buggy molds for the Jet molds and modified them, adding a T-bar and side skirts and replacing the curved
Ford Anglia
The Ford Anglia is a small family car that was designed and manufactured by Ford UK. It is related to the Ford Prefect and the later Ford Popular. The Anglia name was applied to various models between 1939 and 1967. In total, 1,594,486 Anglias ...
windshield (not as easy to acquire in continental Europe) with a flat unit.
[
The Apal 1200 Saloon was an attractive car based on Volkswagen beetle floorplan. It had a thrust-forward nose with a divided front bumper and a well-sloped curved one-piece ]windshield
The windshield (North American English) or windscreen (Commonwealth English) of an aircraft, car, bus, motorbike, truck, train, boat or streetcar is the front window, which provides visibility while protecting occupants from the elements. Mo ...
. The rear-mounted engine was air-cooled, with cooling air exhausting through a grille in the rounded tail, which also sported a divided rear bumper.
The company's most successful model was called the Apal Speedster and is a replica of the Porsche 356
The Porsche 356 is a sports car that was first produced by Austrian company Porsche Konstruktionen GesmbH (1948–1949), and then by German company Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche GmbH (1950–1965). It was Porsche's first production automobile. E ...
Speedster, built on a VW Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...
floorplan. Altogether 700 were completed between 1981 and 1994.
In 1984 Apal also developed a two-seater sports coupé using Mercedes-Benz W201
The Mercedes-Benz W201 was the internal designation for the Mercedes 190 series sedans, a range of front-engine, rear drive, five passenger, four-door sedans manufactured over a single generation, from 1982 to 1993 as the company's first compac ...
underpinnings, called the Francorchamps after the Belgian racetrack.[ This was developed together with an American company with the aim of selling the car in the United States, but with the dollar rapidly losing value the project became untenable and only two copies were built. The company's last model, named the Apal Sport One, based on the ]Pontiac Fiero
The Pontiac Fiero is a mid-engine sports car manufactured and marketed by Pontiac (automobile), Pontiac for model years 1984-1988. Designed by George Milidrag and Hulki Aldikacti as a sports car, it was the first two-seater Pontiac (automobile) ...
, appeared in 1992.
Edmond Pery also designed an all-road prototype for DAF
Daf ( fa, دف) also known as Dâyere and Riq is a Middle Eastern (mainly Iranian) frame drum musical instrument, used in popular and classical music in South and Central Asia. It is also used in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbe ...
in 1974 and another prototype for Volkswagen in 1992. The small firm produced and sold all models in limited numbers.
Specifications of 1966 Model Apal 1200 Saloon
Engine: four-cylinder air-cooled VW, 1192 cc, 7.0 compression ratio, rated at 40 PS
Maximum speed: 80 mph (129 km/h)
Overall length:
Overall width:
Height:
Turning circle:
Wheelbase:
Front track:
Rear track:
Fuel tank capacity:
Empty weight: [L. A. Manwaring, ''The Observer's Book of Automobiles'' (12th ed. 1966), Library of Congress catalog card 62-9807, p. 39]
Phase 2 - Apal Gmbh, Germany (1998- to date)
The original Belgian company closed in 1998. A German company, under the name Apal Gmbh and based in Ostercappeln
Ostercappeln is a municipality in the Osnabrück (district), district of Osnabrück, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the Wiehengebirge, approx. 15 km northeast of Osnabrück. The municipality is made up of three villages, Ostercap ...
(Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...
), bought all the spare parts and restarted production of the Apal Speedster.
As of 2006 the company has stopped production of ready-built cars and only sold kits and spare parts.
As of 2017, the Apal Automobiles brand is the exclusive propriety of Belgian businessman Charles-Antoine Masquelin.
References
{{reflist
External links
*https://web.archive.org/web/20040810065559/http://www.rvccb.be/LISTE%20CONSTR.%20BELGES/A.html#apal
*https://web.archive.org/web/20040728093255/http://www.apal.de/
Apal Club Belgium
Car manufacturers of Belgium
Car manufacturers of Germany
Kit car manufacturers
Companies based in Liège Province
Companies based in Lower Saxony
1960s cars