Watches and cars have a long, wonderful history together. Iconic automakers such as Porsche, Ferrari, Bentley, Aston-Martin, and Mercedes-Benz have teamed up with the best and beautiful from the horological world. As important as those car companies I mentioned, names such as Breitling, Omega, Tag Heuer, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Audemars Piguet.
The cars are beautiful and well-crafted instruments, but the watches are just as marvelous in their intricacies. If you had to work on your car, you could easily grasp the parts in your hand and feel the weight of the tools for the job in front of you. Watch parts are beyond small, and as fragile as the guibo joint on a thoroughbred LeMons race car.
Do you have a favorite automotive themed watch? I am quite partial to the Jaeger AMVOX and the Omega Speedmaster series.
[I found the above image on the Tumblr page of TheAutoInsider and it got my mind thinking about watches. Share your favorites in the comments!]
How Fast is Your Watch?
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56 responses to “How Fast is Your Watch?”
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my brother had an awesome speedometer watch that only had a semi-circle exposed face (the other half was a red-blue temp sensitive colour change part)… i loved it… it was hard to read… the hour hand was the long hand.. the minute hand the short hand… with different colored hands for a.m. and p.m. if only i could find a picture…….
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oh… if i remember right…. the minute hand only went from 1 to 30 minutes with a red needle.. and then the blue needle came up for the other 30 minutes… while the hour hand only changed color for a.m./p.m. making that much harder to read…. loved it….
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in another semi-related note…. 7 to 13 minutes fast. that way i know it's a bit early… but not enough that other people really think about it when asking the time…. and it makes people show up early…. (all the clocks in my house are 7 minutes fast…. means the wife normally gets to work on time when she leaves "two minutes after she should have been there")
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I don't wear a watch much to the chagrin of my lovely wife who has wanted to give me a watch for Christmas each of the last 15 years. I do admire them and especially the Chopard Mille Miglia series. They aren't cheap. Here is one example.
<img src="http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/jomashop_2100_24033424" style="height: 400px; border: 0" alt="imgTag" />
How cool would it be for Porsche to build a robot entirely based on the 917 design language? Forearm fans are so cool.-
Hey Chopard, why must you me such an angry young man?
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While I admire fine watches, the truth is I rarely pay them too much attention or lust – because I would rather have the worthy car, first. Once that box is checked, then I'll look at watches.
Besides, the Angstomobile came with an infmaous "fine Cartier chronometer timepiece" that is a sorry excuse POS, even for the Malaise era: http://goingincirclez.com/Garage/CrapCartierClock I wonder how many of these other brands have sold out and rebadged over the years?
But I'll be honest: after conversing at length with the CEO of my previous employer about his watch, I would love to own a Dornbleuth, even though it has nothing to do with cars:
<img src="http://img.timezone.com/img/articles/comarticles631913056488125000/dornblueth-11s.jpg">
The story of how they came to be – and are made – is amazing. Perfect, timeless, old-school craftsmanship in a modern world.-
You should see some of the RGM pieces <img src="http://www.rgmwatches.com/222BODY_IMAGE_01.jpg" />
Or anything done by Jochen Benzinger-
Whoa, that's a pretty epic steampunk aesthetic… very nice! But yeah, the price of one of those would buy me any number of cars. And makes a Dornbleuth a veritable bargain. And with gold being such a soft metal, I'd be extremely hesitant to own a watch with gold parts.
I have one of those cheapo Majesti skeleton pocketwatches to satisfy my inner clockworks nerd; it's surprisingly elegant in Stainless and Blue, and accurate for $25. But I don't use it very often, and hear they're not exactly durable if abused.
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I would love a 1969 Heuer Monaco Automatic (the LeMans watch) but good examples tend to run in the $10k+ range and I'd rather have a car. Even the modern ETA 2894 based Monacos run $4k… and I'd rather have a car.
The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and Hublot Big Bang series fascinate me in how the hell they're able to charge so damn much. It's like when they were designing them they said "Well, we could machine out a case that screws together to be watertight, that would be the elegant, if expensive, solution… or we could build the case in three parts, sandwich in O-rings and bolt the f**kers together".-
The Big Bang is crazy expensive… and beautiful
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The price is especially nuts when you consider that a lot "base model" ones are running lightly modified ETA 7750s.
What makes the Big Bang particularly dangerous to petrolheads is that there are a couple Ayerton Senna editions… not cheap.
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I wear an Adidas Mudracer. So it's either high-school cross country fast or K5-Blazer-with-Buckshots fast.
<img src="http://www.redfingerprint.com/image/watches/AD_00/adidasADK1613_small.jpg"> -
F1 in particular. Ask Max Mosley how he teamed up with the horological world.
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I was going to mention that little Freudian slip. Tag Heuer you filthy little minx.
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F1 fast. I wear a cheap Bulova watch.
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There are a couple of us who would appreciate this watch. I don't have one, but I do have a Ford GT clock in my guest bedroom/office/den/fun stuff room.
<img src="http://www.texasgarages.com/TX_FOR_Watch_10003.jpg">-
Not surprisingly, I really really really want that watch!
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It's on eBay for $119.99 (that's almost $120.00), Buy It Now, two available.
http://cgi.ebay.com/FORD-GT-CHRONOGRAPH-MENS-META…
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It is not car related, but any chance to look at a picture of the B&R Heritage is a good thing:
<img src="http://www.geekwatches.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/bell-ross-instrument-br-heritage.jpg">-
Bell & Ross make th most gorgeous watches.
They are kind of car-related, in that the designers aim for pure function, inspired by military and race car instrumentation.
Personally, I'd prefer one with cornflower font and solid black leather strap, but still thumbs up. -
I kind of like the dial, but that armband is hideous. That kind of in-product advertising is more becoming of corpo-whores like Nike… not a high-end watchmaker.
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You can get a black rubber band which also looks good.
The cool thing about this series are the various colors available for the dial numbers. All inspired by helicopter instrumentation I believe…
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If they only could put the R in reverse..
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I’m a big fan of the Bell & Ross watches as well, but one thing that this picture doesn’t give you is a sense of scale. They are actually massive watches. You need a wrist like Andre the Giant to make it work.
Currently, I alternate between a Tissot T-Touch (http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefanlichtl/3838103132/) and a dressier 1940’s Movado that looks very similar to this (http://www.vintagewatch.ca/Pictures/Picture%202653.jpg). Neither a particularly car-related, but I think it’s a good start to a watch collection. -
That is fantastic. It should have come with a folding engineer's compass.
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The EDOX WRC Chronorally looks like just the thing to tell me how fast I'll need to go to catch Loeb, Latvala, et al
<imgsrc="http://www.professionaljeweller.com/pictures/gallery/chronorally.jpg"> -
In the under $1000 catagorey, that I might someday buy is the Tissot T-Touch.
My favorite is probably the 1980 Tissot Lotus F1 digital watch.
<img src="http://www.retro-watches.co.uk/watches/K-O/images-blue/000097-%288%29.jpg">-
hey,
i have a t-touch, and i totally love it, i have looked at replacing it with a "fancier "- aka more expensive watch, but you just cant beat the functions…
the altimeter is awesome – though its often not quite correct – it runs on air pressure, so it can vary with the weather
the meteo function is great when hiking so you can predict changes in the weather
the thermometer is great for finishing those frequent "how hot is it today" discussions
but without a doubt the compass is the sure fire winner, i have used it loads of time, from helping with directions when exiting the tube, to helping me get out of a slum in brazil when i got lost – and many other situations when you just need to know where north is!
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A Rolex Daytona, because, while I might still get rich and be able to afford a nice watch, the ship has sailed on winning the Daytona 24.
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Most of the time I don't even know what day it is.
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I had a them-Duke-boys fast watch, but my current watch is more geek-80s-car-with-digital-dash fast.
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/smokyburnout/04-14-10_1955.jpg">
The huge aluminum Dukes of Hazzard watch was the one I wore in high school. It stopped working a few months after I got the battery replaced at Wal-Mart.
The Casio is one I picked up on eBay a year ago. It's not a Databank, but a calculator/TV remote control watch. This time, I replaced the battery myself and still managed to screw it up somehow, so it doesn't work. I might get it fixed, though.
I kind of want a Tokyoflash watch, but for that kind of money I could get some new shocks, or a toolbox… -
Keep the cash for your cars I got this retro nerd watch for something like $15.00 that leaves hundreds or thousands to put into my ride
<http://i.pbase.com/o2/21/513721/1/123629641.5jWDQJ0V.Casio.jpg> -
I love good watches…but like so many others here, I'd rather rock my $40 Fossil spend the rest on tools.
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I would rather buy a good watch… then ask you to fix my car (when I own one again someday)
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My rates are reasonable.
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I go more for gadgets than style. About $200 is my max for a watch, which doesn't get much more than a nice Seiko or Citizen. For everyday I go with the Casio G-Shock that automatically syncs with the atomic clock, so I always know EXACTLY what time it is.
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My everyday watch for several years now has been a special edition Motochron, made in very limited numbers for the California Mille. The face mimics a '55 Porsche Speedster speedo in km/hr. Another important aspect of the watch is that it is a self winder. Real car guys don't wear watches with batteries.
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I won a BMW MP3 watch from Autoweek several years ago. Only 256mb though. Cool, but I'm not a big enough pr-ck to wear a BMW watch. Needs a battery… anyone want?
Saving my dimes for Tag Monaco. Like that Gulf one… Also playing the lottery. -
The only automotive related watch I own is a nice Momo Design chrono with a carbon fiber face. This is not exactly it, but close enough.
<img src=http://www.righttime.com/PRE-OWNED/MENS_WATCHES/271-10181.jpg> -
Is it wrong that I am really tempted by the cheap Chinese knock-offs in the ad at the top of the page? Most look pretty good, but I did find it funny that their TAGs were TAG-Heuer, not TAG-Hauer. $75 just seems too high for a knock-off, $25 and we'll talk.
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For good looking but cheap watches you should head over to PropertyROom.com
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Uh, it is Heuer http://www.tagheuer.com/
Dig into watches a bit and you'll find a whole replica watch scene with people dropping $300, $500, $1,000 on a fake… it's bizarre.-
That's what I get for using Google to check my spelling.
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i too am really tempted by a fake, i just want a watch that "looks" good, i dont care if its expensive or real, for example the breitling bentley models are just beautiful!
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IMO, the Rolex Daytona is pretty much at the top of the heap. Some of of these car-related "editions" strike me as the equivalent of commissioning a painting to match your couch. Yes, even the Breitling/Bentley jobs.
While I have started wearing a watch again as daily wear, I generally feel like having anything on my wrists/gloves when I'm driving with some pace. -
Cool Russian watches can be had via eBay for low money.
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