Ian Walker built the car this project began with.
Not on a production line. Not as a finished object bought and driven away.
He built it himself.
It took him three years.
The story starts earlier than the build. Walker had wanted to be a mechanic since he was about ten, helping his father repair cars. He left school at fifteen, began an apprenticeship, and stayed with the same company for fifty years — eventually becoming sales director.
The company was Haynes of Maidstone.
He worked through its departments, including the agricultural and industrial sides, became a skilled fitter, ran the truck division and eventually became sales director. Ford was his first love.
The Cobra came much later.
Walker says he began thinking about building it in the 1980s. Around 1988 he acquired the engine from Nick Whiting, but he did not actually begin building the car until around 1991. He collected parts in advance, researched what he wanted and gradually assembled the specification.
He was particular about what went into it.
He did not want an imitation of an original Cobra. He wanted a car that would work for him — something smooth, usable and capable of being driven as a cruiser rather than a track car. He fitted a three-speed automatic gearbox for convenience and pleasure. He refused to badge it as a Cobra because, in his words, it was not a Cobra.
It was his interpretation of one.
That distinction is important.
The car was built around decisions.
The wheels were researched rather than simply bought. The chassis was galvanised rather than painted. Stainless-steel components were selected wherever possible. Brake pipes were anodised. Parts were collected, investigated and sometimes specially made.
Walker had access to a professional workshop at Barry Tomlin’s coachworks, where he occupied a bay with a lift for nearly three years. He would arrive on Saturdays and work on the car, using the facilities of a working coachworks around him.
The result was never intended to be a replica in the strict sense.
It was a personal object, assembled according to what Walker believed a Cobra-like car should be.
He drove it for around ten years.
There were shows, events and trips. He took it to France, including a journey to Reims to see the old racetrack. The car attracted attention everywhere it went.
Eventually, Walker sold it to a man in Derby.
That was the last he saw of it until Eduardo found him again.
Seven years before the interview, the car returned to its builder.
And Walker recognised it.
There are three years of his life in that car.
He says that seeing it still brings “a lump to my throat”. The people who helped him build it are no longer all here, including his wife.
By then, the car had become something else too.
It had become the starting point for PIAFEIRA.
The Cobra was the reason an ordinary cap became a problem.
Open-top driving exposed the weakness.
The cap moved.
The question was how to keep it there.
The Touring Cap followed.
But before the cap, there was the car.
And before the car became part of this archive, there was Ian Walker — three years of work, research, parts, decisions and persistence, assembled in a workshop bay in Kent.
The connection was not sought.
It was found.
The object came first.
The question followed the object.
And the person who built it was still there to tell the story.
Interview recorded for the PIAFEIRA Archive.
Primary source: Ian Walker interview, PIAFEIRA Archive
