It all started in the early 80's when Arwo Pullola from Filipstad got the inspiration for a car-camper, which later was renamed to Toppola. The word came Toppola of "Top" - on top, and "ola" is a (more of a Finnish sounding)
förfinskning of the ending when Arwo strains from Finland.
1982, I got in contact with Arwo and this led later that we bought the project from him and formed EMICO in Kågeröd AB. We rented an old smithy who serve our purposes well, Kågeröd is between Helsingborg and Malmö a couple mil in from the coast.
We, that is Peter Malmberg and Matts Mollestam, came from the boat business where Matts was a very good boat builders and I sold the boat. This has naturally reflected at Toppolan that has always been built boat, so we have been able to, given the quality.
In spring 1982 had a flying start with 10 deliveries in which we also acquaint ourselves with the project, this meant dygnetrunt-work to deal with. After 10 campers, we arrived at that we had to break the production of the moulds were felkonstruerade, the construction of the moulds led to a lot of extra work and we took the decision to build new ones. This does not in any way that they Toppola which was built in this series is worse from a strength standpoint. A distinctive feature of these Toppola is that the door is located on the left side of the back cover, and that the lower section at "roof racks?" takräckena is corrugated and that the body leans a little backwards.
One detail is that SAAB-Norway came between them and led us to produce an additional two paragraphs of these shapes when they could not wait, but wanted to have up their Toppola for a presentation.
The next generation was given shape as was practical and it was in part a different look. Bakdelen was raised 10 cm to give Toppolan a better impression, formerly saw the baktung out. The corrugated underpart at "roof racks?" takräckena smooth out and we modified the interior. The door was still on the left side of the back cover. During this time, the summer of -82 was made quite a number of prototypes that were all a development of each other.
At the beginning of september SAAB came into the picture. It was a very disruptive time with major changes and a whole new way of thinking. It was a huge difference between small and large EMICO SAAB. It was a time with an incredible development for Toppolan when SAAB demanded that our camp would be equally attractive and nice outside and inside their cars.
We changed the most, glass fibre-back door on the left side was replaced with a aluminium door is fitted in the middle of the back cover. Two small boxes, one on each side of the door, was set in. These boxes were for the sieve from "inside mirror?" (innerbackspegeln). A round box was placed in the upper part of the door to give a "kajutkänsla" and two small round boxes installed at the same level as the head of the bed.
All textiles and replacement light grey inredningsmatta mounted in the ceiling and walls, Inredningsmaterialet in the cabinet and the galley and was the biggest news, Wall-cooker was introduced, this opened the possibility of using Toppolan in winter. Your kitchen was both the stove and heater, it was svindyr but it did Toppolan to a year-round product.
These changes were released in -84 year model. During this time was the colour white top and rear while the lower section was black.
SAAB spent a lot of work on the project, including took up new brochures in four languages, English, English, French and German, the idea was to introduce Toppolan in all its markets. It took up a 16-page instructions are also in four languages and quantities of other measures were taken for marketing.
We got to be in slututvecklingen of new SAAB 9000 that it would build in some difficulties for subsequent installation of Toppolan on it.
At the premiere display of the SAAB 9000 for all SAAB dealers were two pieces Toppola mounted on either black 900 turbo outside the entrance to the showrooms.
Toppolan was at that time the largest and most expensive original partners for SAAB and all were enthusiastic. We delivered everything we could build and we had at the same time, with the upgrade of Toppolan built on tillverkningslokalerna in Kågeröd and employ more staff.
To make a long story short, and without mentioning too many details, it appeared that EMICO and SAAB was too different in size and culture and we were later forced to close down EMICO. This was before July 1984. This was what one might call a hard school, but could only learn something, it was a good thing.
Now followed a year with other activities before I got control over the project again. Without SAAB, I got to start thinking in other courses in terms of marketing. Some real financial resources were not so I took to press releases. Toppolan is a little different as the newspapers were happy in it, and often came back and made a major feature articles. This gave new contacts and we got in Toppolan in Sweden NOW and Sweden Today is a newspaper and a television programme supported by the Swedish Trade Council. This gave a lot of new contacts abroad and that later led to the sale in 13 countries. Export sales did well in fact a deficit because all new importers would help running, but it was instructive.
The country that received the highest number of deliveries was Germany, where we also became TUV approved. TUV is the world's toughest approval in which to test everything and makes it tough. This took a year and cost a fortune. We received a fantastikt host of Press and television in Germany but TUV's conduct delayed us for so long that we were no longer news when it was finally clear, despite the age of a little over twenty. It was mostly Ford Scorpio and Sierra models exported to the UK.
What happened around the same time was that we had a bad experience when a fire broke out at a company we shared the premises with. This marked the beginning of a year's battle with insurance companies, this together with the delays by TUV of Germany became almost more than we could handle. We stop at for a while, then I found it a little too heavy and I went over into other activities. During this time, we had a fairly successful renting, it was also a popular way to try before buying.
After a couple of years with other data was pressure from potential customers for large and I started to develop an entirely new Toppola who came to be called a Toppola II. When I would now begin on the project again, I wanted to bring together all the lessons and impressions gathered during the earlier years of the new project.
The biggest desire in the years was, of course, be able to mount Toppolan on the car any time, be able to replace the lower section, so that only the upper part, the living area, was the standard and the rest were shifted. The bottom came to be known as "Damask" and is available today for three cars, SAAB 900, 900 / 9.3 and SAAB 9000 CC.
This also resulted in a model that was totally new to us - Toppola pickup. This Toppola suits, in principle, all the pickup's on the market in a single model. To build a camp for the pickup's was completely new because we had a very different place to play for. It was excellent to get a large kitchen, a large table with four seats and still have the same big bed at 1.70 x 2 meters that we have in personbilscampern.
Then we had the technology to build easily in the past, it was no great art to build a fully equipped camp, which weighed less than 250 kg. We also made professional Toppola which the interior betod of both the professional furnishing and bomöjligheter.
Another issue we had to solve was to give the owner an opportunity to highlight Toppolan on and off the car itself. This would be solved at a low price so that everyone could buy lyftställningen and thus make life easier for itself. We had built many variations on the theme and they worked but they were also expensive. What we did now was to produce a status model "barngunga", put in a couple of blocks and trailerwinsch. To make things safe, we put a hook in the ceiling of Toppolan.
Body was designed after tips from the aerodynamics of SAAB Aircraft so that it got even less air resistance and we crack the long sides so that ytterbredden stopped at 175cm. This means that the vast majority of cars on Monday will mount Toppolan has ytterbackspeglarna outside the body of Toppolan.
Although the range is smaller, we have more space inside the body than in the past and everything is better suited for the rational production.
The bed was high in the old chassis but we wanted to increase foot space, that we overcame by raising the front and changing the nature of spoils, so that the mattress could slip back into it. Thanks to killing the page was the bed even broader in foot end, and up to the waist.
Body rounded in all corners and on the roof of both air and the look, we pulled out the rear end on the roof to get a better luftsläpp and it also gave more opportunities to mount solar panels.
The new chassis is suitable even for the modern car more rounded forms.
When we were ready with the new bodywork and started building sprang Sweden in the downturn and the leisure halted completely. We made a couple of copies of all models as you can see in the pictures.
It felt well as the usual misfortune but we have a very fine product, and who knows what is going forward.
This was part of Toppolans history.
Peter Malmberg