Paul Russell and Company

Paul's interest in things mechanical began with his father, who had worked his way up from machinist in a mill shop to become his company's head of engineering. One of Paul's early memories is of a garage beside a large brick house in the wealthy part of the town where he lived. Inside was parked a Cord Beverly Sedan, looking like an airplane with its outside exhaust pipes and array of dashboard instruments. Paul and his dad would often stop and peek at the car through the garage windows. The Saturdays of his youth were spent building models and fixing stuff. An entry in the Pinewood Derby was his first ‘four-wheeled vehicle’.

While in college, Paul could not shake the ‘car thing’. He talked his way into a job as a mechanic-trainee at a small independent repair shop run by an experienced graduate of the rigorous five-year apprenticeship program at Mercedes-Benz, Germany. Although he loved the cars, the necessary priorities of a street-car service business did not satisfy his personal desire to perform high quality workmanship. After working with a few other shops, he arrived at a small firm that catered to Mercedes-Benz of the 1950s. Five years and several business courses later, with encouragement and support from his entrepreneurial mother, Paul purchased that firm's restoration division. In June of 1978 he opened for business under the name of “Gullwing Service Company, Inc.”

Paul's personal passion to preserve great examples of automotive design and to honor their original construction details continues to fuel his business. When not on the shop floor discussing the intricacies of a repair procedure, he may be on the phone, chasing down a critical piece of information or advising a client on the best course of action for a particular project. Many weekends during the year he can be found either presenting a client's car or judging at a concours event.

Free time is spent with his wife Barbara and their family, on occasion getting away from it all to a rustic cabin they are building on a small island off the coast of Maine.

“With Paul Russell, it's not a business. It's his life.”

Ralph Lauren