The Apollo was a German
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 ...
manufactured by
Ruppe & Son of
Apolda
Apolda () is a town in central Thuringia, Germany, the capital of the Weimarer Land district. It is situated in the center of the triangle Weimar–Jena–Naumburg near the river Ilm, c. east by north from Weimar. Apolda station lies on the Hall ...
in
Thuringia
Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million.
Erfurt is the capital and larg ...
from 1910 to 1927; the company had previously offered a car called the
Piccolo
The piccolo ( ; Italian for 'small') is a half-size flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" the modern piccolo has similar fingerings as the standard transverse flute, but the so ...
. The first Apollo was called the "Mobbel", and featured an
air-cooled
Air-cooled engines rely on the circulation of air directly over heat dissipation fins or hot areas of the engine to cool them in order to keep the engine within operating temperatures. In all combustion engines, a great percentage of the heat ge ...
624cc single-cylinder
ioe engine. The company also offered air-cooled 1608 cc
in-line fours and a 1575 cc
V-4. Four separate
cylinder
A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base.
A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...
s inline powered the model "E" (1770cc). The model "B", designed by racing driver
Karl Slevogt, had an
ohv
An overhead valve (OHV) engine, sometimes called a ''pushrod engine'', is a piston engine whose valves are located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier flathead engines, where the valves were located bel ...
960 cc four-cylinder engine. Another of the designer's fine creations had an ohv 2040 cc engine. Other Apollos had
sv four-cylinder engines of up to 3440 cc; some post-1920 models featured
wishbone suspension
A double wishbone suspension is an independent suspension design for automobiles using two (occasionally parallel) wishbone-shaped arms to locate the wheel. Each wishbone or arm has two mounting points to the chassis and one joint at the knuckl ...
. The last cars produced by the company had ohv 1200 cc four-cylinder engines; some had sv 1551
Steudel four-cylinder power units instead. The famous designer of
two-stroke engine
A two-stroke (or two-stroke cycle) engine is a type of internal combustion engine that completes a power cycle with two strokes (up and down movements) of the piston during one power cycle, this power cycle being completed in one revolution of t ...
s,
Hugo Ruppe, was the factory founder's son; in 1920 Apollo took over his air-cooled
MAF cars. During the mid-1920s, Slevogt raced cars of this marque with streamlined
Jaray bodies.
Brass Era vehicles
Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of Germany
{{Brass-auto-stub