The History of Gumpert: The Small German Maker Behind the Apollo

Gumpert at a glance

Roland Gumpert: from Audi engineer to car maker

Roland Gumpert joined Audi in 1969 as a test engineer after studying mechanical engineering in Graz. In 1974 he became head of pre-development and testing, the department that worked on four-wheel drive for road cars. In 1981 he took over Audi Sport, and in the following years Audi won 25 world rally championship rounds and four world titles before leaving rallying in 1986.

He later spent more than three years in China running sales and marketing for the dealer network of Audi's joint venture there. When he came back to Germany at the end of 2001, he already had the idea that defined his company. He wanted a sports car that could be driven to a circuit, raced and driven home again, a proposal he had first made in 2000.

How the Apollo was born

The trigger was a request from the designer Roland Mayer, who asked Gumpert at the end of 2001 to help build a prototype. Audi allowed its former sports director to take part on one condition: the car had to become a series product, not a one-off show car.

Marco Vanetta drew the first designs, and a 1:4 scale model was made in 2001. Two universities, the Technical University of Munich and Ingolstadt's University of Applied Sciences, helped with construction, computer simulation and wind-tunnel tests. Two full prototypes followed, and the company was registered in 2004 as GMG Sportwagenmanufaktur Altenburg GmbH. After early money problems and new partners, it became Gumpert Sportwagenmanufaktur GmbH.

Series production of the Apollo began in October 2005 in Altenburg. The car made its public debut at the Top Marques show in Monaco in 2006 and was sold through Gumpert dealers as a fully road-legal car. You can read about the car itself on our Gumpert Apollo page.

The Apollo: engineering in brief

The Apollo used a tubular chromoly frame with fibreglass panels or optional carbon fibre, gull-wing doors and a mid-mounted engine driving the rear wheels. The engine was a 4,163 cc version of Audi's V8 with two turbochargers, dry-sump lubrication and five valves per cylinder, paired with a six-speed sequential gearbox from CIMA.

With a kerb weight of 1,100–1,200 kg, by our calculation the base car carried about 2.3–2.5 kg per kW, and the Race version close to 2.0 kg per kW. Gumpert quoted 3.1 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h and 360 km/h for the 650 PS car; our power converter gives the kW equivalents. The firm also claimed that above 306 km/h the downforce would let it drive upside down in a tunnel. That claim was never tested. Our power-to-weight calculator shows how these ratios compare with other supercars.

Records, racing and the 2008–2012 peak

The Apollo Sport made Gumpert famous in 2008, when it lapped the Top Gear test track in 1:17.1 in an episode broadcast in July. That was 0.2 seconds faster than the previous best, set by the Ascari A10, and the record stood for about two years until the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport beat it. The German magazine Sport Auto timed the Apollo at 7:11.57 on the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

The company also raced. An Apollo hybrid prototype started the Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2008. The Apollo Speed appeared at Geneva in 2009, and the Apollo Enraged followed at Geneva in 2012 with 574 kW. A grand-touring concept, the Tornante, was shown at Geneva in 2011 with 515 kW and a planned production start in 2015 that never came.

Prices and production numbers

Gumpert was always tiny. The plan was to build about 60 cars a year. In reality around 44 Apollos were completed between 2005 and 2012, according to Wikipedia's production figure, which works out at fewer than six cars a year on average. The old version of this page said that 30 cars were built in 2009 alone; we could not confirm this from a second source.

The old version of this page also quoted the German prices of the time: €301,600 before VAT for the basic Apollo, with €77,910 extra for the Sport and €125,320 extra for the Race version. By that list, the Race would have cost about €426,900 before VAT. Customers waited four to five months for a car. These figures come from the old page only and should be read as indicative.

Insolvency in 2012 and liquidation in 2013

Sales could not support the company. In 2012 Gumpert filed for insolvency, and the administrator kept about 30 jobs and planned to restart production in November 2012. The rescue depended on an investor, and when that anonymous backer withdrew, the company went into final liquidation in August 2013. Apollo production ended with it.

Rebirth as Apollo Automobil

In January 2016 the Hong Kong consortium Ideal Team Venture, which also owned the De Tomaso name, bought the remains of the company and renamed it Apollo Automobil GmbH. Roland Gumpert left later in 2016.

The new owners showed the Apollo Arrow at the Geneva show in March 2016. It was a twin-turbo V8 car with about 735–746 kW (1,000 PS) and a projected top speed of 360 km/h; our news report on the Apollo Arrow covers its debut. The next car, the Apollo Intensa Emozione, used a naturally aspirated 6.3-litre V12, was limited to ten cars at a price of at least €2.3 million each. It generated a claimed 1,350 kg of downforce at 300 km/h. Apollo Automobil is now based in Denkendorf, Bavaria.

Roland Gumpert went on to found Gumpert Aiways Automobile and became known for the Gumpert Nathalie, an electric sports car with a methanol fuel cell.

Gumpert compared with other small supercar makers

Gumpert's approach was the most racing-led of the three: the Apollo was a track car made road-legal, not a grand tourer made faster. Koenigsegg and Pagani survived by moving into hypercars with prices far above the Apollo's; their stories are told in our histories of Koenigsegg and Pagani.

Our verdict: what the Gumpert story shows

Gumpert proved that a small team with racing experience could build one of the fastest road cars of its decade, but not that it could sell enough of them. For collectors, an original Altenburg-built Apollo is rare: with around 44 cars made, it is scarcer than many limited editions from larger makers. Buyers should check the service history of the Audi V8 and the sequential gearbox, and whether parts support still exists for the exact version.