Automobile Designers


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Automobile Designers

Automobile Designers

While other men were building cars for the masses in the early 1900s, low-priced vehicles that almost anyone could afford, Thomas Russell had his eye set on the well-to-do. Though he used slogans like “A high-grade car at a wonderfully-low price” and “Made up to a standard, not down to a price,” his namesake car, the Russell, was hundreds of dollars more than the competition - $450 more than Henry Ford's Model C, to be exact.

The beautiful Russell Model A was in a class of its own, with ball-bearing hubs, pneumatic tries, hand-stitched leather padded seats, gasoline 2-cylinder engine, and a shaft drive with sliding gear, three-speed transmission. Produced at the Russell Motor Car Company starting in 1905, the automobile was Canadian-made, through and through, “the only Canadian owned company to ever produce and market a product designed by Canadians, built by Canadians and sold to Canadians,” according to Steve Pitt in the January 2002 issue of Legion Magazine. The Russell was a hit internationally, too, selling in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Thomas Russell Named General Manager of CCM

At 24 years old, Thomas Alexander Russell was a farm boy with a political science degree. Business was not in his background, but he took on the post of Executive Secretary of the Canadian Manufacturers Association in 1899 and made a grand success of the job. Russell's exuberance for the task helped membership explode by over 400 percent; he also started the the trade magazine, Industrial Canada. Canadian Cycle and Motor Limited (CCM) of Toronto, Ontario came calling two years later, scooping up the energetic young man to take charge as General Manager of the flagging bicycle company.