[4] In 1949, Howard Metzenbaum and Ted Bonda founded APCOA as the Airport Parking Company of America, Inc. in Cleveland, Ohio.

The company then expanded across Europe, entering[5] Vienna, capital of Austria, in 1970; Sunbury on Thames, England, in 1981; Mantua, Italy in 1985; and Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1989.

By the mid-1980s, most of the European in-country subsidiaries had been divested from ITT, and slowly over the next ten years the management of APCOA Autoparking GmbH began to re-integrate the group under common ownership.

[1] The US operations of APCOA were purchased from ITT Corporation through a management buyout in 1975 and eventually merged with Standard Parking in 1998.

[5] After consolidating various partnerships to 100% ownership,[clarification needed] the company continued its expansion into Eastern Europe, entering Rijeka, Croatia in 2003.

[11] In a first step management tried to find equity investors as well as refinancing partners in order to decrease the debt pressure on the company's performance.