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The first time:

An introduction to fine art cars.

I wasn’t obsessed with historic vintage cars until I experienced the magnificence of their machinery in person. The first introduction was picking up a part-time work gig at the Monterey Historic Car Show in California.

Hired at the Toyota tent, I chauffeured the owners of pristine vintage Alpha Romeo’s and Cherry Red ‘69 Jaguars from the parking lot to the showroom in a little golf cart, down a steep hill incline, with faulty brakes.

At one point I picked up an F1 driver who thought it would be fun to press on my foot to see how fast we could make a shuttle golf cart fly up and down the side of the hill. Good times.

It was all worth it though. The perks were being able to get up close and personal with a breed of car I had never experienced. Art machines designed and molded. Inspired by their predecessors, or innovative and new.

Then, then I saw an advertisement for a showcase of the Phantom Corsair at the Concours d'Elegance. A worldwide car competition held on the 18th fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Course, along the Pacific Coast of California, just 30 minutes from my apartment of the time.

The advertisement image of the car sparked fire in my brain.

I just wanted to get near the car. Touch the car. Sit in it. Stand 100 feet away from it. Anything to help me better understand the magnificently shaped machine that looked like it came from the future.

I got the indie artist grant to my wish - I was hired to work the Concours d'Elegance as a bartender. I was hired for the Mercedes room, right off the green.

As I drove to my shift, down 17 Mile Drive in my 1994 Toyota Camry with 180,000 miles on it, I saw the owner of a Bugatti parked on the side of the road. He was buffing his hood.

He then drove a few hundred feet, parked on the side of the road, buffed his hood again, then repeated the process. It was my first glimpse into the high end car world. A view of the collectors.

In between making Gin & Tonics, I had a tiny eye shot of the cars on the green. I couldn’t see the corsair, but it occurred to me - I was watching an art show. An outdoor museum showcase of sculpted machinery.

I had the answer to my question. How does something like the Phantom Corsair, so impressive, so fly, so futuristic looking, get made in 1938?

A visionary made it.

A creative.

Stepping back in time

Rust Heinz, Grandson to Heinz Canned Foods fortune, created the Phantom Corsair you see above. Not the model, the actual car. There's only one.

As you can imagine, coming from the family heavy in the Canned Food Business, designing cars wasn’t looked on too fondly. Rust was a bit of a black sheep.

Maybe it helped inform the deep black, six passenger, steel-aluminum bodied, flush fendered, electronic button entry art car. Yep, electronic buttons back in 1938.

The car was ahead of its time and dubbed the “Flying Wombat” as an ode to its stealth technology.

Also known as "Rusty", the Flying Wombat’s designer was twenty-five and a dashing “Gatsby-esque” version of F Scott Fitzgerald.

A young designer, his college career started at Yale, but he was drawn back to his home town of Pasadena to produce the creation and design of phantom corsair. He lived with his Aunt and collaborated with Bohman & Schwartz.

The vehicle was created with the intention of marketing it to a high class demographic of car buyer in 1938 (those willing to drop the equivalent $300k+).

Apparently people were too worried about how to actually park it, or change a tire on the side of the road, so the car never gained enough traction to be manufactured before Rusty’s untimely death at the age of 25.