A vehicle position calculating apparatus and vehicle position calculating method which can accurately calculate a current position of a vehicle regardless of the orientation of the vehicle at the time when acquiring positional information.An advancing direction detecting section in a vehicle position calculating ECU detects an advancing direction of a vehicle in a receiving area according to receiving area form information issued from a receiving area form acquiring section, moving distance information issued from a moving distance calculating section, and course change information issued from a course changing action detecting section. A vehicle position calculating section sets a reference position according to reference positional information issued from a reference position acquiring section, and calculates the current vehicle position by taking account of the advancing direction in addition to a relative change based on relative change information issued from the relative position change detecting section.