Elias "Russ" Russinoff could have name-dropped to beat almost anybody in Detroit; he'd met Harley Earl, was personally hired by Bill Mitchell, and worked alongside Chuck Jordan. Russinoff could have climbed the GM ladder like many of his contemporaries; he showed initiative and leadership capabilities alongside the requisite creativity for a GM designer. But the avowed auto design enthusiast never did, preferring instead to keep designing cars up until his recent death at age 90."It was my dream come true," Russinoff wrote of his design career in 2002. "And yes, I still have gasoline in my veins."He'd set his heart on auto design as a teenager just after World War II ended. He'd already filled all the margins in his schoolbooks with car sketches for some time, according to the essay he wrote for John Jacobus' The Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild: An Illustrated History, so at 16 he signed up for a correspondence course advertised in the back of Popular Mechanics. According to the ad for the Woodward Avenue-based Detroit Institute of Automobile Styling, the course was "personally directed by Harley J. Earl" and the students got "the sincere help and advice of a staff of outstanding designers currently working on top car styling."

"What a break!" Russinoff wrote. "The course taught me the do's and don'ts of car design." Specifically, he told other interviewers, the course reiterated Earl's "design rules" of making cars longer, lower, and wider.Not long after, he'd get a chance to put those principles to use. His father, who had started as a die designer and engineer at Ford in 1920 and later moved to the Fisher Body division of GM, showed Russinoff a flyer for the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild contest and supplied him with a block or two of wood he could use to carve his entry.

It took me a year to design and build my first model... After submitting the rather crude model, I visited the GM building to see all the entries on display, and was flabbergasted! What a rude awakening: the top models boasted chrome moldings and aluminum wheelcovers that were turned on metal lathes. Those models featured bumpers, plastic headlights, window moldings, license plate brackets, hood ornaments, and everything a finished production car would have. My wheels had been turned on an inexpensive lathe, which was not very accurate, since the wheels were not exactly round.

Humbled but not dissuaded, Russinoff gave it another shot the next year and took third place in the Michigan state competition. Then in 1949, after he'd perfected his techniques of carving mahogany, hand-filing and chrome-plating brass components, milling the wheels on a tabletop lathe, and painting using a spray gun attachment for a Hoover vacuum cleaner, he took first place in the national senior division with a rear-engine sedan. For his 500 hours of labor over eight months he won a $4,000 scholarship and, more important, gained the conviction that he had the talent to become an auto designer.

Where exactly he should spend the scholarship money, though, was a problem. Art Center in Pasadena was renowned for turning out auto designers, but was too far away, and no other school had an automotive design program at the time. Russinoff spent a little time at Meinzinger Art School to learn how to render, but on advice from GM designer Homer LaGassey, he applied to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, which had an established relationship with GM.

After my school day, I would meet with three or four other students who were also car enthusiasts to talk about and sketch (what else?) cars and more cars.

General Motors offered a student program at its Design headquarters during the summer, in in my fourth year at Pratt (1954), I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the program. I learned that summer that car design is a collaborative effort. Our full-sized airbrushed renderings were critiqued by the professionals on the design staff. An unexpected highlight of the summer was a visit by Harley Earl himself! It was great fun.

Bill Mitchell, assistant head of GM's styling staff, came to Pratt during my final year in search of design talent. After seeing my portfolio and model he remarked that I had "gasoline in my veins." I was lucky to be hired by the styling leader, and by General Motors... What an exciting time that was!

The Army drafted him right out of college, but after a two-year stint, he took up his post at GM in 1957, specifically in Ned Nickles' Chevrolet studio where, alongside Ken Genest and under lead designer Pete Wozena, he contributed sketches for the design of the Chevrolet Corvair.

Assignments in a number of other GM studios followed, from the Pontiac and Oldsmobile production studios to the Aero and Advanced Vehicle Concepts studios. Russinoff took credit for the 1966 Pontiac Grand Prix front end as well as some third-gen F-body elements, but most of his designs focused on more far-flung ideas, all rendered as long, low, and wide as possible.

"I don't think he ever worked in a production studio," retired GM designer Paul Tatseos said. "It doesn't surprise me that he passed over opportunities for promotion. He was very intensely into car design right from the beginning."Since retiring in 1995, Russinoff remained active in auto design circles, contributing to the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild reunions, participating in the League of Retired Automotive Designers activities, and displaying his work in Detroit-area exhibits of original automotive renderings. One of his renderings is currently on display in the Detroit Institute of Arts's current exhibition, Detroit Style: Car Design in the Motor City, 1950-2020 while his Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild models are currently on display at the Gilmore Car Museum.  Russinoff died on November 11 at the age of 90.

Just Keep Drawing

Strohl, D. (2020, November 17). For 40 years, Elia Russinoff passed up promotions just so he could keep designing cars at GM. Retrieved January 26, 2021, from https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2020/11/17/for-40-years-elias-russinoff-passed-up-promotions-just-so-he-could-keep-designing-cars-at-gm