Russell "Russ" Begg - engineer

Cool, put me down for a copy when you are done. Can't help with info on Begg though.

This is from the original 2001 article mentioning Begg found on the wayback machine from the link provided by Alex above, http://web.archive.org/web/20021017005355/http://www.gmhistorian.btinternet.co.uk/HOLDENCARPROJECT.htm

At this point we have to bring in yet another key player: RUSSELL S. BEGG. Begg was born in the U.S.A., and graduated in 1909 from the University of Michigan with a B.Sc. Degree. He then spent three years with the Packard Motor Company, then a period with the E.B. Thomas Motor Car Company, and then the Sheldon Axle Company. After that he was appointed Assistant Chief Engineer at Thomas B. Jeffery Motor Company, where he was responsible for Rambler and Jeffery motor cars. He was then appointed Chief Engineer to the Jordan Motor Company went the company was reorganised, and was in that post for 12 years. However, at the end of his period of tenure with Jordan, the E.G. Budd company took him up, where he gained valuable experience with steel body construction techniques as reputedly, their Chief Engineer. After this influential period with Budd, Begg moved to the Stutz Motor Company in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was appointed Chief Engineer. Presumably as Stutz went out of business, he was taken up by GENERAL MOTORS ENGINEERING, and appointed engineer in charge of design in Lou Thoms’ Product Study group in Detroit. It appears that he was appointed Deputy Chief Designer at Adam Opel A.G. in Rüsselsheim in 1934, at the same time as being a member of the P.S.G. He was then promoted in 1936 and reassigned permanently to Adam Opel A.G. as Assistant Chief Engineer. Earle MacPherson no doubt filled Begg’s position in the P.S.G.: see below so that Begg was not directly responsible for the Light Car Project, which he would, nevertheless, be involved with.

The article mentions the building of Hudson bodies in Australia.

Jon, quote from the article:

In 1926, General Motors Export Company incorporated a new subsidiary, the aforesaid GENERAL MOTORS (AUSTRALIA) PROPERTY LIMITED, based in Melbourne and Sydney, and Innes K. Randolph was appointed the company’s first Managing Director: Randolph had been in one of the Indian Sales Offices with Graeme K. Howard and was promoted and moved by General Motors Export Company to Australia to head the new subsidiary. Laurence J. Hartnett and G.C. Sears had replaced Randolph and Howard in India. This was a proper assembly operation of chassis exported from U.S. Plants, Chevrolet kits being supplied from the Tarrytown-on-Hudson Assembly Plant which exported S.U.P. cars, with “22” prefixes [these were the special chassis with cowl as against fully C.K.D. until the 1929 Models which were sourced from Bloomfield Boxing Plant]. Holdens’ had started producing closed bodies for Hudson and Essex in 1925, and then for 1926 assembled bodies from imported packs which were virtually identical to North American bodies. From this point on, more and more local content was added. This work required the installation of a much larger panel press at Woodville, which resulted in the acquisition and installation of a 40-ton machine that could exert a pressure of 300 tons and process 160 panels per hour. Increases in demand and output in 1926 resulted in increases in floor-space, with the result that the company claimed that they were the largest of their kind in the Empire outside Canada.