Glass-fibre specialist Edmond Pery founded this small automobile manufacturing company in Blegny-Trembleur (Liège), Belgium in 1961. Pery presented his first model, a GT coupe with gull-wing doors, propelled by Volkswagen or Porsche engines at the Salon de BRUXELLES in 1962. In 1965, Apal started producing a Formule V single-seater. Between 1968 and 1973, about 5000 glass-fibre bodies were produced for different buggy models such as Apal Buggy, Apal Rancho, Apal Jet, Apal Avvi, Apal Corsa (having gull-wing doors) and Apal Horizon. The most successful model was named Apal Speedster. It is a replica of the Porsche 356 model, built on a VW Beetle floorplan. Altogether 700 was completed between 1981 and 1994. The last model, named Apal Sport One, based on Pontiac Fiero, appeared in 1992. Edmond Pery also designed an all-road prototype for DAF in 1974 and another ptototype for Volkswagen in 1992. The small firm produced and sold all models in limited numbers.
Phase 2 _ Apal Gmbh, Germany (1998_ to date)
The original Belgian company went down in 1998. Apal Gmbh, a German company of Ostercappeln, bought all the spare parts and restarted production of the Apal Speedster.
Fact is that in the autumn of 1972 Apal exchanged a set of the molds for this model with the Four Seasons Buggy Company in the United Kingdom to obtain the molds for the Apal Jet in return.
Apal added its beautiful side-skirts and most likely also the targa-bar, but removed the original round windshield (from the Ford Anglia) and replaced it by a less elegant flat windshield.
Since Apal was (and still is) a fiberglass company was, that's why, from the early beginning they concentrated on the improvement of existing and the design of new bodies.
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