Paul Russell and Company

Welcome to Paul Russell and Company. We are quite proud of our state-of-the-art facility, purpose-built to support the award-winning restoration work that is accomplished within.

As soon as you enter our front door there is a feast for the eyes. Almost any of our award winning cars may be on display, depending on what is currently under our care. The walls are covered with some of the articles written about our restoration projects and a photo display featuring many of our award winning cars.

Around the entryway are the offices where the business details are handled by an administrative staff of three. Alex Finigan, who handles all of our sales and brokerage requests, can often be found in his office looking through his impressive collection of reference materials on behalf of a client. The conference room holds another extensive library of automotive research books and historic photos, plus original paint and fabric samples collected over the years.

A tour of our facilities generally starts in the metal fabrication shop, an aspect of our business that did not exist until 1984. We are especially proud of these hard-to-find services, which illustrate both the technical and the artistic skills required for automotive restoration. Panel beating, or recreating a body panel in the proper shape and size from a piece of flat sheet metal, requires a skilled hand and an experienced eye. We are fortunate to have acquired the expert metalworking skills of Richard Docking, who relocated from England specifically to join our team. He is pictured here working on the original body of a historically significant Alfa 8C-2900.

Displayed amidst the two work bays in the metal shop is the specialized equipment used by the early coachbuilders, who made all body panels by hand and then fitted them to each individual chassis. For the restoration of a 300 SL body we can work from the full-size blueprints acquired from the Mercedes-Benz factory. But for most metal work we have to use the remaining evidence on the car, in combination with any helpful pictures found in our own reference materials, to determine what the panel shape should be. Often we must also go out into the classic car community to find other examples to examine and measure so that we can make templates.

Now we move on to the body shop. As in the metal shop, skylights help to give a clear view of panel surfaces. The five work bays are usually full of bodies on chassis jigs, and assorted body panels on sanding benches. This is where the body parts are primed and minor surface imperfections are addressed with various epoxy filler primers. Any irregular gaps in the fit of the panels are adjusted during trial assemblies.

Our pressurized downdraft spray booth is just one part of a significant investment in the proper environmental control equipment needed to do restoration work responsibly. Air is brought in from outside the building, filtered, and then pushed down into the spray booth through a one million BTU gas-fired heater that adjusts the air temperature to the technician's setting. The paint-filled air is exhausted through two sets of filters underneath the floor before being released.

Across from the spray booth is the paint-mixing room. As these cars get older the original paint formulas and component tints are becoming less available. Color matching a car's paint is a difficult task, and our ability to formulate both metallic and non-metallic paints is backed by our fully stocked paint room.

At the far end of the body shop is our wet bay. One car wide, with floor drains and extra lights, all the messy paint stripping and wet sanding is done within this contained room. Next-door is our state-of-the-art waste disposal room, where the chemicals used for paint stripping and parts cleaning are processed for proper disposal. Wastewater collected from floor drains located throughout the work areas is filtered and rendered down to low volume solids.

Our extensive parts cleaning room can be accessed from either the body or the mechanical shop. It is filled with the wide variety of chemical baths and media blasting cabinets necessary to clean components that have a half-century of sludge attached to them. In a separate area there is an old paint booth that we have converted to a car-sized sandblasting booth.

Passing through a set of swing doors, large enough to push a car through during inclement weather, we enter the largest workshop area at Paul Russell and Company. The mechanical shop has eight work bays, five hydraulic car lifts, a second paint booth for refinishing individual mechanical components, and a separate room dedicated to rebuilding engines and transmissions.

The mechanical shop contains all the necessary equipment, not only for the basic preventive maintenance and preservation work that all great old cars need, but also for the extended jobs requiring that every last nut and bolt be restored.

A collection of rolling, shelved carts seems to create walls between the work bays. Each of these carts is filled with a car's worth of the component pieces that will be reassembled into larger and larger parts until, in the case of a body-off restoration, a fully operational rolling chassis stands before you. Items on these shelves will receive a technician's attention many times during the restoration process, as each gets disassembled, inspected, repaired, painted, plated, and reassembled.

At the very back of the mechanical area is our machine shop, home to our resident Tool and Die Maker, Thane Heal (pictured). Stationed here are two Bridgeport milling machines, a metal lathe, a surface grinder, precision measuring tools, and a collection of the 'old style' machines used by the original part manufacturers. A long-time car enthusiast, he plays a significant role in researching the proper repair or remanufacturing standards for a myriad of original parts, from door handles to door lock springs.

His services are in high demand here, as it is common-place for each project to be in need of quite a few rare items, whether the car is in for restoration or for service. Thane makes use of a CAD program when work must be sent to a specialty machine shop, or when it happens that we need to reproduce quantities of an item.

The side of the building opposite to the metal and body shops is where coach trimmer Derrick Dunbar (pictured) and his associate Richard Barnes perform their craft. Both men were trained by Rolls Royce and certified by City & Guilds London Institute during a four year apprenticeship.

The upholstery shop has room for one car, facilitating the hands-on installation of interior pieces such as carpeting and convertible tops. Two large worktables are for laying out and cutting leather hides and other fabrics, as well as for sewing and assembling individual trim pieces.

When rebuilding the seats, interior panels and tops, our restoration technique is true to the original methods and materials used. If the seats or cabriolet tops originally had horsehair padding, that's what we use. We make no substitutions such as modern poly-foams just to make the job easier. We even produce the custom luggage that was once offered by Mercedes-Benz and other European marques.

Across the loading dock is the sales showroom, filled with some of the other cars that are currently under our care or are available for sale. Usually there is a very interesting selection of 300 SLs, Porsches, Ferraris, Bugattis and other limited production European classics.

Located within the center of the building is our parts department, expertly overseen by manager Jack Styles. Much of the activity here is in direct response to the difficulties encountered in locating the correct parts or materials for these older vehicles. A sigh of relief can be heard when a reproduction is successfully created, a repairable replacement is found, or a long awaited item finally clears US customs. A back room contains an inventory of commonly used parts.

This service area also contains an assortment of desks and files for dealing with the accumulating paper trail, an important part of any project. Clipboards for all active projects, holding the work records and repair notes, cover one wall. Bookcases full of parts and service reference books and computers to access our digital photo archives add to the atmosphere.

Cross the hall to the front offices, and our tour is complete. But this building was purposefully built to serve its inhabitants, and so we end with the team of people, passionately dedicated to the preservation of fine automobiles, who make up Paul Russell and Company.

• Alex Finigan
• Chris Hammond
• Derrick Dunbar
• Donnie Graham
• Jack Styles
• Jane Dane
• Janet Oliver
• John Carey
• Kenny Johnson
• Michael Veys
• Paul Glynn
• Paul Russell
• Randy Elber
• Richard Barnes
• Rich Bryk
• Richard Docking
• Sheila Wilson
• Stacy Puckett
• Susan Barnet
• Thane Heal
• Tommy Pittam
• Walter Valerio

“Russell's shop is tucked away on one of those winding New England roads tailored for a weekend spin in a '50s-era roadster. The low-slung building is a sort of Plymouth Plantation of the automobile world, peopled by specialists with the skills and knowledge of true artisans.”

Tom Duffy
“Bringing Back the Classics”
Cigar Aficionado