1973 Jidé 1600. Yellow version
Jacques Durand (28 June 1920 – 16 August 2009) was a French engineer, model builder and automobile designer. 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.
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 (1,102.3 lb). 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.
