Apal

Glass-fibre specialist Edmond Pery founded this small automobile manufacturing company in Blegny-Trembleur, Liège Province, Belgium in 1961. Pery presented his first model, a GT coupé with gull-wing doors, propelled by Volkswagen or Porsche 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 windshield (not as easy to acquire in continental Europe) with a flat unit. ==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 (Lower Saxony), 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==