Rust Heinz (October 18, 1914 – July 24, 1939) was an American car and boat designer. He is perhaps best known for designing the 1938

Phantom Corsair The Phantom Corsair is a prototype automobile built in 1938. It is a six-passenger 2-door sedan that was designed by Rust Heinz of the H. J. Heinz family and Maurice Schwartz of the Bohman & Schwartz coachbuilding company in Pasadena, Californ ...

, a prototype car built on a Cord 810 chassis by the coach builder Bohman & Schwartz, incorporating a Lycoming 190 bhp

V8 engine A V8 engine is an eight-cylinder piston engine in which two banks of four cylinders share a common crankshaft and are arranged in a V configuration. The first V8 engine was produced by the French Antoinette company in 1904, developed and us ...

, weighing two tons and seating six people. The Phantom Corsair project was helped by finance from his aunt. Following his death, the car was never mass produced and the

prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototyp ...

remains the only one ever made.

Background

Heinz was born in 1914 in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

, Pennsylvania, the second son of Howard Covode Heinz and Elizabeth Granger Heinz, and younger brother of Henry John "Jack" Heinz, II. They were grandsons of the late

Henry J. Heinz Henry John Heinz (October 11, 1844 – May 14, 1919) was an American entrepreneur of Palatine descent who, at the age of 25, co-founded a small horseradish concern in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania. This business failed, but his second business exp ...

who founded the Heinz empire. In 1937 he married Helen Clay Goodloe, with whom he had a daughter Helen Meredith Dewitt Heinz Heinz studied

Naval Architecture Naval architecture, or naval engineering, is an engineering discipline incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software and safety engineering as applied to the engineering design process, shipbuilding, maintenance, and o ...

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

and Westlawn Academy of Yacht Design and designed a number of

speedboats A motorboat, speedboat or powerboat is a boat that is exclusively powered by an engine. Some motorboats are fitted with inboard engines, others have an outboard motor installed on the rear, containing the internal combustion engine, the gea ...

,. He abandoned his studies in 1936 and went to live with his aunt in

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. Its ...

. He set up a design studio and established himself as an automobile designer in California, to pursue a passion he held since 1936 when he was 21 years old, where he designed a delivery vehicle called the Comet for the Heinz company, which was built by the Square Deal Body Company on an Autocar chassis intended to be used for promotional work. He then designed the Phantom Corsair.

Death

Heinz was killed on July 24, 1939, in a car accident at Westinghouse Bridge in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. Heinz had allowed his friend Phil Brainard to drive his open Buick home from a dance he was attending. During the journey Brainard's trilby hat flew off. After a detour to collect the hat, the Buick ventured back on to the

Lincoln Highway The Lincoln Highway is the first transcontinental highway in the United States and one of the first highways designed expressly for automobiles. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913 ...

near

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

and was broadsided by an unseen vehicle. Six people were injured in the crash and Heinz died the following morning from head injuries. Heinz is buried at

Homewood Cemetery Homewood Cemetery is a historic urban cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located in Point Breeze and is bordered by Frick Park, the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, and the smaller Smithfield Cemetery. It was established i ...

, Pennsylvania in a private mausoleum (section 14, lot 61, grave 7) with other family members. Other family members also interred in the mausoleum includegrave records
/ref> Robert Eugene Heinz (1899, grave 8), Henry J Heinz (1919, grave 4), Clarence Noble Heinz (1920, grave 6), Clifford S Heinz (1935, grave 3), Howard Heinz (1941, grave 5), Elizabeth Rust Heinz (1952, grave 1), Henrietta D Heinz (1954, grave 2), Dorothy Louise Heinz (1979, grave 4).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heinz, Rust 1939 deaths American people of German descent Heinz people 1914 births People from Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania Heinz family Burials at Homewood Cemetery Concept cars Yale University alumni 20th-century American inventors Road incident deaths in Pennsylvania

Background

Death

See also

References