Yahoo Autos Take a Look at the Estate of Longtime GM Designer Elia Russinoff
Elia "Russ" Russinoff spent his high school years in the 1940s doodling cars in the margins of his notebooks. That led him to a correspondence course advertised in Popular Mechanics. The Detroit Institute of Automotive Styling claimed the class would be "personally directed by Harley J. Earl"—the legendary GM executive the National Corvette Museum calls "the father of the Corvette."
Russinoff began turning drawings into models. At 16, he submitted an entry for the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild. The following year, he earned third place in the Michigan state competition for auto design. The year after that, he won, securing a $4000 scholarship with a model of a rear-engined sedan. His love of design was cemented.
A Detroit native and lifelong GM artist who retired in 1995, Russinoff died in November at the age of 90. This weekend, Eclectic Attic Estate Sales will host a two-day estate sale at Russinoff's Farmington, Michigan home. The collection includes abstract paintings, plenty of midcentury modern furniture, and it highlights his his drawings and prints, automobile memorabilia, personal tools, and even his drafting table.
"He was drawing up until a few years ago," Russinoff's son, Paul, says. "It was something that was in his blood."
After high school, Elia Russinoff made his way to the Pratt Institute, which had a relationship with GM. In 1955, GM design honcho Bill Mitchell—another lifelong GM design legend recruited by Harley Earl—visited Pratt scouting for talent. Russinoff said the GM icon looked at his portfolio and told him he had gasoline in his veins. Two years later, Russinoff was seated as one of the new hires among the Chevrolet design team, working for the same man who'd guided his correspondence course.
During his nearly 40-year career, Russinoff said he preferred to stay in the concept studios where design wasn't restricted by production feasibility, and he turned down promotions in order to stay in place. He ended up doing a few tours in the production studios, though, putting his pens and brushes to work on the tortured gestation of the Chevrolet Corvair and the second- and third-generation Pontiac Firebird.
Paul Russinoff says his father's "whole life was devoted to automotive design, and he had a tremendous sense of style." Paul says Elia was most proud of his work on the front end of the 1966 Pontiac Grand Prix, and the elder Russinoff assisted on the second-generation hardtop sports cruiser. The estate sale includes a framed montage of the Corvair and those Pontiacs, as well as another framed montage of a few of Russinoff's concept vehicles.
