Fast & Furious
Modern haute horlogerie lands a new icon in the racing-inspired MB&F HM8. Yanni Tan reports
ver the years, die-hard modern horology enthusiasts have come to eagerly await the annual masterpiece by MB&F. This time, the creation is every man’s high-speed, adrenaline-pumping boyhood fantasy encapsulated in a watch: the Horological Machine No 8 (HM8) Can-am. It is the eighth and latest edition in a long line of Maximilian Büsser’s flagship Horological Machine collection, which was launched in 2007 with the pioneering HM1 that propelled the brand into international stardom. An audacious endeavour by the entrepreneurial Büsser and his collective of incredibly talented independent watchmaking friends, MB&F was born as an artistic concept laboratory for a singular purpose: for the realisation of creative, radical and complex masterpieces of the highest calibre. Inspired by science fiction, the Horological Machine family fuses traditional fine watchmaking and cutting-edge technology with avant-garde three-dimensional architecture. Essentially, they are pieces of controversial horological art worn on the wrist. So far, collaborators on this collection include design, engineering and watchmaking masters the likes of Eric Giroud, Laurent Besse, Peter Speake-marin, Jean-marc Wiederrecht, Maximilien Di Blasi and Beranger Reynard. After the success of HM1, other Horological Machines followed with sub-series within each design edition, whose blueprints ran the gamut from aviation and deep space travel, to robots and anime, to even a frog. The HM8 Can-am is the product of the evolution and refinement of the race car concept that is much-loved by Büsser, who made up for his unfulfilled childhood dream of being an automotive designer with the HM5, HMX and now, the HM8. As he said it rather gleefully himself, “I feel that this is one of the coolest pieces I’ve ever created.” Indeed, even the literature on the timepiece proudly declares: “It wouldn’t take much to scale HM8 up to car size, drop a 1,000+ horsepower motor under the sapphire crystal hood and put a set of slick racing tyres under the chassis.”