Rights to manufacture his design were subsequently held by a succession of businesses in Portugal after the French creator of the vehicle had disappeared from the picture.

[2] He was a passionate engineer and, as a young man, closely involved with the compagnonnage [fr] before returning to his native Cantal where he set up an automobile workshop business which as the next war progressed and the oil ran out, specialised in converting cars to run on wood based “gazogène” fuel.

[3] After the war Cournil found a stock of US built Jeeps that had been left behind, and these he adapted and maintained for agricultural use.

Responding to a perceived concern over the robustness of the standard gear-box, Cournil substituted gearwheels derived from castings which he machined in his own workshops.

By the early 1960s he had decided that the Hotchkiss Jeep chassis was insufficiently robust for the agricultural challenges of central France, and had substituted his own virtually indestructible four-wheel drive vehicle which had progressed a long way beyond the original Jeep design and which in the Mining industry acquired the soubriquet “Tracteur Cournil”.

The front was distinguished by drastically sloped fenders to allow for maximum visibility on the narrow mountain tracks for which the vehicle was intended.

[6] Displacement was increased to 2,260 cc (137.9 cu in) engine and power up to 35 PS (26 kW); the design also benefitted from glow plugs and a stronger oil pump amongst other detail improvements.

The new engine was considerably smoother and was also available in a version with higher output, 54 PS (40 kW), and the model was now called the JA2.

In 1968 BLMC was formed, and as a result about fifty JA2s were equipped with the less-than-reliable 2.1-litre Land Rover diesel engine.

company (SIMI) in 1980 and during a period when ownership was being transferred to Auverland in 1983/84 the vehicle was briefly marketed as the Autoland.