The Shelby Cobra may well be the epitome of an American muscle car, but as a Brit I feel duty bound to point out that its visual appeal originates in the UK. Carroll Shelby approached AC Cars, based in Thames Ditton, Surrey, in 1961, asking them to build him a modified version of the AC Ace that could accommodate the V8 engines that ultimately gave the car its signature sound.
In fact, the chassis number CSX2128 that served as the inspiration for the Baume & Mercier Capeland Shelby® Cobra 1963 and 1963 Competition editions presented at the SIHH 2016 can be decoded as “C” for the third series of the Cobra production and “SX” for Shelby Export, referring to all the left-hand drives that were exported to Shelby in the USA without engine or transmission, which were subsequently fitted with V8 engines by Shelby.
Allen Grant worked at Shelby in the Cobra era and managed to wangle a drive in a Coventry Motors Cobra (whose livery was painted by Grant’s room-mate, a certain George Lucas who later rose to fame as the creator of Star Wars). His exploits earned him the recognition of Carroll Shelby and subsequent drives for the works team in CSX2128, racing under no. 15 with the distinctive black and yellow factory colours.
The black and yellow features prominently on the two Baume & Mercier Capeland Shelby® Cobra 1963 editions, which differ only in their strap (one has a sporty black rubber strap, while the other has a black alligator leather strap with a yellow rubber-effect calfskin lining): Both are limited to 1963 pieces and equipped with a self-winding Valjoux 7753 chronograph movement.
The new models evoke an era of automobile racing when, as Allen Grant paraphrases “men were men, and the men drove the cars”. As Grant explains, it was a time when “the cars were very fast because they were light and had powerful engines, but at the same time they were also relatively simple. You could see the spark plugs and replace them if you needed to. Now you cannot work on a car unless you have a computer and you are computer literate. You can no longer see the engine components. It takes some of the human element out.”
But it was also a time when the mechanical chronograph had a genuine function in motor racing. Asked how he measured time in the cockpit when he raced, compared with today’s Formula 1 drivers who are fed a steady stream of information on displays in the cockpit or through their earpieces, Allen Grant reveals that he timed his laps “quite simply using a good chronograph. I would time my lap times and try different lines around corners to gain time.”
With so many shared values, it’s little surprise that this legendary racing driver, who still enjoys a track-day when he can take his vintage Shelby Daytona Coupe up to “nine-tenths”, finds the partnership between the 186-year-old Baume & Mercier and Shelby “a marriage made in heaven”.
