A vehicle control apparatus for implementing inter-vehicle distance control of a vehicle carrying the apparatus behind a preceding vehicle. In the apparatus, an offset storage is configured to calculate an offset that is a difference between detected distances to first and second targets, and store the offset associated with the first target forward of the second target. The inter-vehicle distance control may be implemented based on a distance calculated by subtracting the offset from the detected distance to the first target. An offset eraser is configured to, based on the presence or absence of relative displacement between the first and second targets, determine whether or not the first and second targets belong to different vehicles, and when the first and second targets belong to different vehicles, erase the offset stored by the offset storage.