Imperia TA-7 History

Facing severe financial pressure during the Depression, Imperia struck a licence agreement with the German manufacturer Adler in 1933 to assemble front-wheel-drive cars with Belgian-made coachwork. The TA-7 was the smaller of the two resulting models: a 995 cc four-cylinder producing around 25 hp, using Tracta constant-velocity joints for its front-wheel drive — the same system employed by Rosengart in France under a parallel Adler licence.

The TA-7 made Imperia the pioneer of Belgian front-wheel-drive production cars, but it also marked a strategic retreat: the company was no longer engineering its own chassis. The coachwork was built locally in Nessonvaux, giving the cars a distinctly Belgian character even if the mechanical underpinnings were German in origin.