Well now this is interesting. Since discussing the plywood cars and hydraulic drive systems of Raymond Russell, we’ve been in contact with Russell’s son, Raymond Benjamin Russell, who sent us a much better photograph of the Gadabout than we could find earlier. The gadabout is a remarkable car in and of itself, but check out what’s behind it – Rust Heinz’s Phantom Corsair.
It gets odder. The younger Russell told me that at the time the photo was taken (which would have been sometime in 1944), the Phantom Corsair was owned by a friend of the elder Russell’s named Bill Strohl. If you read Michael Lamm’s SIA story on the Phantom Corsair, you’ll see that he referenced a William Stroh of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, as the third owner of the car (from circa 1943-1945). Could it be that Lamm mis-heard this guy’s last name and I have a mysterious rich uncle whom I’ve never heard of until now?
