Biography
Russ Heaps began covering the automotive industry in 1986, when he parlayed his position as a retail ad sales rep into helping conceptualize and establish a stand-alone automotive section for the Boca Raton News, a Knight-Ridder newspaper in South Florida. In 1995 he moved to the Palm Beach Post to help develop its bi-weekly automotive pages. Leaving the Post in 2000, he freelanced car reviews to a variety of publications before assuming a senior editor position at AMI Auto World magazine in 2001. While at AMI he helped launch NOPI Street Performance Compact magazine and was appointed its managing editor.
He freelanced stories on a variety of topics since leaving AMI in 2004. His regular outlets have included Hispanic Magazine, the Miami Herald, the Washington Times, the Journal-Register Newspapers, AAA Go magazine, MyCarData.com, Automotive Metrics, Bankrate.com, Autotrader.com and Interest.com.
In 2022, he accepted the senior editor for advice at Cox Automotive (KBB and Autotrader).
In addition to freelancing automotive reviews, from 1991 until 2001 he was supervising producer of the syndicated television series Discover America.
Russ currently resides in Greenville, SC., where he runs the Website: just3thingsvideo.com, and produces theYouTube channel BEER2WHISKEY.