Jacques Durand

Jacques Durand (28 June 1920 – 16 August 2009) was a French engineer, model builder and automobile designer.

Durand was born in Paris on 28 June 1920 and grew up at the family's summer home in Antony.

He attended the Lycée Lakanal in Scéaux and then the École des Atelier des Postes, télégraphes et téléphones, graduating with a CAP (certificat d'aptitude professionnel) de mécanique de précision.

Upon his return to Paris he took steps to avoid being conscripted by the STO (service de travail obigatoire) being run by the German forces then occupying France.

In 1943 Durand started making a line of small-displacement engines (0.9 cc to 30 cc) for model airplanes, cars, and boats in the basement of his house.

These engines were sold under the name "Jidé", which was a homophone of his initials "JD" in French.

The Jidé line was succeeded by the Vega series in 1949.

He is primarily known for designing several sports cars, which were built in small volumes in France beginning in the 1950s and continuing into the 1990s.

In 1957 Durand met the father of racing driver Jean Vinatier.

The elder Vinatier's Alpine A106 Mille Miglia had been damaged, and to understand what would be needed to repair the car's fibreglass bodywork Durand paid a visit to the workshops of Chappe et Gessalin to quietly observe the production of automobile bodywork in plastic by professionals.

To him the process seemed simple, but much experimentation was needed before he was satisfied with the quality of his own work.

Once he had mastered the fundamentals of producing automobile bodies he began planning to produce a body for a car of his own.

The first full-sized car designed by Durand was the Atla, also called the A.T.L.A. in some references.

Durand designed a small berlinette body to be made in fibreglass.

The design was notable for having gullwing doors like the 300SL.

The car received a tubular steel spaceframe chassis courtesy of engineer Charles Cusson.

Most of the cars used a rear-engine powertrain sourced from the Renault 4CV, although at least one Atla was built with the air-cooled boxer-twin engine and transaxle from a Panhard Dyna Z in a front-engine, front-wheel-drive configuration.

Basic weight for the car was just 500 kg. Financing to build a series of Atlas was provided by Renault dealer Jean Schwab, who also assigned one of his employees to help with painting and trimming the cars.

The prototype was complete by 1957 and the car went into production the next year.

A major price increase near the end of 1958 caused orders to come to a halt, so the Atla was only built for one year.

The total number of Atlas built is estimated to have been fewer than thirty cars.

The next car that Durand was involved with was the Sera.

This was not the SERA-CD company founded by Charles Deutsch, as indicated by that company's full name of "Société d'Études et de Réalisations Automobiles - Charles Deutsch".

The two companies were, however, contemporaries.

The company for which Durand designed his Sera was founded by M.G. Rey and was based in Porte de Villiers, Paris.

For them Durand designed a stylish 2-seat convertible.

The Sera was designed from the outset to use the engine and front-wheel drive transaxle from the Panhard Dyna Z. The car was unveiled to the public at the 1959 Paris Auto Salon.

Early cars were built in a facility in Paris but production was later moved to the former Motobloc factory in Bordeaux where only another 15 cars were built before the factory was shut down again.

One of the Bordeaux Seras was exhibited at a fair in Barcelona Spain.

This resulted in Durand receiving a proposal to build the car in Spain, which led him to relocate to Tarragona to restart Sera production there.

Import restrictions imposed by the Franco government made it impossible to obtain the French Panhard components needed to complete the cars.

One Spanish-built Sera was completed with a three-cylinder two-stroke DKW engine in a front-wheel drive layout and a second car was fitted with a Fiat engine in a front-engine, rear-wheel drive configuration before the endeavour collapsed.

After moving back to France from Spain Durand returned to Antony and in 1962 once again partnered with Cusson to design a new car.

The name of the project was ACPA, which was an acronym that is variously reported to have stood for "Atelier de Carrosserie Plastique Automobile" or "Ateliers de Construction et de Production Automobile".

(This project is also called "ALPA" by some, but there is little supporting information. Pictures also exist of the cars with "ACPA" nameplates. The same site shows an ACPA with the name "ARPA" across the rear, which name Cusson later used for his own line of Formula France cars.)

The car was an attractive berlinette with a large glass backlight.

The windshield was taken from the Renault Floride.

Four bodies for the new car were made.

Durand then began putting the engines into his own series of 1/10th scale models of racing cars like the Jaguar D-type and Mercedes-Benz 300SL, among others.

Bodies for these scale models were made out of aluminum.