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) 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 of kilometers 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 boats. This has naturally reflected at Toppolan that has always been built like a 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 around the clock-work to deal with. After 10 campers, we arrived at that we had to break the production of the moulds beacuse they were hard to use, 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?" 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 Toppolas 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. Back-end was raised 10 cm to give Toppolan a better impression, formerly it looked heavy in the back. The corrugated underpart at "roof racks?" 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 as their cars.
We changed the most, glassfibre-back door on the left side was replaced with a aluminium door is fitted in the middle of the back cover. Two small windows, one on each side of the door, was mounted. These windows were for the sieve from "inside mirror". A round window was placed in the upper part of the door to give a "marine-feeling" and two small round windows installed at the same level as the head of the bed.
All textiles and replacement light grey carpet mounted in the ceiling and walls, The fabric in the cabinet and the galley was the biggest news, Wallas-cooker was introduced, this opened the possibility of using Toppolan in winter. Your kitchen was both the stove and heater, it was expensive but it made the Toppola 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 produced up new brochures in four languages, Swedish, 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 were active in the developing-part of new SAAB 9000 so they wouldn´t build in some difficulties for subsequent installation of the Toppola.
At the premiere display of the SAAB 9000 for all SAAB dealers there 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 part for SAAB and all were enthusiastic. We delivered everything we could build and we had at the same time, with the upgrade of the Toppola, rebuilt the localities in Kågeröd and employed 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 Christmas 1984. This was what one might call a hard school, but if we 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. With no real financial resources, I took the advantage of press releases. Toppolan is a little different and the newspapers were happy for it, and often came back and made a major feature articles. This gave new contacts and we got the Toppola in Sweden NOW and Sweden Today, it´s 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 were in fact a deficit because all new importers had to have 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 they 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 that, a little over twenty Toppolas were sold. 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 worked 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 jobs the "pressure" from potential customers became to 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 these years was, of course, be able to mount Toppolan on different cars, 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 it´s 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 space to plan. 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 hatchback-camper.
Then we had the technology to build lightweight in the pastic, it was no great art to build a fully equipped camp, which weighted less than 250 kg. We also made professional Toppola which the interior of both the professional furnishing and the "livingfacilities".
Another issue we had to solve was to give the owner an opportunity to lift Toppolan on and off the car itself. This would be solved at a low price so that everyone could buy the lift 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 "children-rocking", put in a couple of blocks and trailerwinsch. To make things safe, we put a hook in the ceiling of Toppolan.
Body was designed with tips from the aerodynamics of SAAB Aircraft so that it got even less air resistance and we crack the long sides so that the widerness stopped at 175cm. This means that the majority of the Toppolas will have the cars sidemirrors 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 large in the old chassis but we wanted to increase foot space, we overcame that by raising the front and changing the nature of the front, so that the mattress could slip back into it. Thanks to "killing" the side was the bed even broader in foot end, and up to the waist.
Body rounded in all corners and on the roof for both air and the look, we pulled out the rear end on the roof to get a better "windflow" 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 the Toppola, Sweden went into a regression and the leisuremarket downturn and stopped completely. We made a couple of copies of all models as you can see in the pictures.
It felt as we had the usual misfortune but we had a very fine product, and who knows what is going to happens in the future.
This was a part of the Toppola history.
Peter Malmberg