A control apparatus for a vehicle provided, with a step-variable transmission, includes: a feedback control portion; an input torque resetting control portion; a target input torque setting portion operated upon an increase of the accelerator pedal operation amount in the process of the shift-down action in a power-off state of the vehicle, to restrict an amount of increase of the input torque target value with respect to an amount of increase of an operator-required input torque value, so as to keep the target value not larger than an upper limit value until termination of the input torque resetting control; and an actual input torque increasing portion operated upon the increase of the accelerator pedal operation amount prior to initiation of the inertia phase, to implement an input torque increasing control to control the input torque so as to be larger than the target value, prior to the inertia phase initiation.