Gus Wilson was the best-known automobile mechanic in America for about fifty years during the middle of the 20th century. Ruggedly handsome, the forever forty-something-year-old man in the railroad engineer’s cap could diagnosis the mechanical woes of every make and model of automobile there was. Unlike today’s master mechanics who can never seem to duplicate your problem after you drop it off at their shop, Gus always stuck with it until he was able to diagnose the issue and then complete the repair. If only Gus Wilson had been real…
Gus Wilson was the proprietor of the Model Garage, an independent repair shop not at all unlike the Weiser family’s Old Bluebird Garage on Black Rock Turnpike. The Model Garage opened in 1925 on the pages of Popular Science Magazine. The exploits of Gus Wilson were recalled by multiple writers who all went under the pen name of “Martin Bunn”. While neither Martin Bunn nor Gus Wilson existed in real life, anyone who has ever worked under the hood of the cars produced during the years those Gus Wilson stories were published can attest to the fact that those authors had all plied their skills doing the same. Both the problems and the repairs they described were accurate.
From January of 1929 until December of 1947, Frank L. Hubbard drew the illustrations of Gus and his customers. Well done, but more generic and less defined, readers could put a face to Gus but certainly not one that would create an unmistakable character that one would recognize each and every time it was seen.
Beginning in January of 1948, a thirty-nine-year-old freelance artist who lived in Easton, Connecticut would take over the duty of drawing Gus, and his character would appear so real and lifelike that Popular Science would begin getting regular fan mail addressed to Gus Wilson, much of it containing questions about how to fix a nagging problem with their automobile. That artist’s name was Ray Quigley, and he would draw Gus every month for the next 22 years.
Ray was born and raised in Syracuse, New York. He attended Syracuse University where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree. It was the middle of the Great Depression when Ray graduated university, but that degree in art wasn’t about to secure him a job that paid very well. He was more than happy when he landed a job at a local advertising company where he was tasked with designing caps for milk bottles. In a 1955 interview, he joked that “new horizons opened up on my second job. They not only had milk bottle caps but ice cream and cottage cheese containers.”
Next, Ray went on to work with a major advertising firm in Boston where he honed his skills in researching the technical aspects of every product he was drawing. Knowing how something works or what features will appeal to prospective buyers allowed Ray to create illustrations that the manufacturer of the product would embrace. He would go on to do work for a multitude of a large corporations over the years, including: Ford, International Harvester, General Electric, Dupont, Trans-World Airlines, and Pepsi-Cola.
Beginning in the late 1930’s, Ray also illustrated books and created covers for many magazine publishers. He also created the artwork for many books from publishers like Simon and Shuster and the MacMillan Company.
During World War II, Ray worked for United Aircraft in Hartford in the design department.
In 1945, he and his family moved to Easton where they lived in a log home on Cedar Hill Lane. His only daughter, Nancy, kept a horse, a dappled grey mare named “Miss Chief” on the property. While living in Easton, Ray decided that free-lancing would allow him greater creative freedom as well as provide him with more opportunities to earn a better income.
His varied artistic skills along with his good sense of business also made him a good teacher. He taught classes at both the Brooklyn Museum Art School and the Famous Artists School in Westport for many years. He also taught amateur artists in Easton for over fifteen years.
But it was likely Gus Wilson, the character he had so deftly defined through his illustrations, that Ray would become best known for. After landing the assignment of drawing Gus, Ray searched for the perfect model. Someone with a rugged sense of masculinity. Ray’s dad had been an automobile dealer in Syracuse and Ray had grown up in a greasy garage with mechanics who looked the part he envisioned for his version of Gus.
After finding the perfect model to portray Gus Wilson, Ray used his likeness for nearly a year in the stories before one day deciding to bring his “mechanic” to the office of the magazine. Ray’s illustrations of the man modeling as Gus were so realistic, that employees at the magazine came up to him with the greeting, “Hello, Gus.”
“They didn’t even know he had a real name,” laughed Ray as he recounted the story in a July 31, 1955, feature article in the Bridgeport Sunday Post.
So, what did the man Ray portrayed as Gus do when he wasn’t modeling, Ray was asked.
“He ran a business selling needlework and embroidery,” the artist replied.
If you lived in Easton during the two-plus decades that Ray Quigley drew Gus and his Model Garage, you very likely could picture many of the locales Ray drew as very closely resembling the suburban houses in the developments south of Flat Rock Road, or some of the farms in the northern end of town.
The attention to detail in Ray’s work made the cars shown completely identifiable right down to the model and year. Some vehicles in the illustrations that were created before 1957 clearly showed the unique square aluminum license plates that all Connecticut cars wore at the time. Even if you never knew Ray or the fact that he resided in Easton, you likely pictured either Easton or Fairfield as the setting for most of those stories.
In all, Ray Quigley illustrated well over 250 stories about Gus Wilson and the Model Garage. While probably not the most lucrative job in Ray’s long career as an artist, in some ways, it was likely one of the most rewarding.
