We recently held an event at London’s famous Ace Cafe to celebrate automotive watches. It was great to see so many interesting timepieces and hear how they were linked to cars and bikes. It’s such a large category of watches we thought it would be fun to take a deep dive and explore them a bit further…
What is an Automotive Watch?
An automotive watch is one that is related to cars or motorbikes. This includes watches made in partnership with car brands, made to celebrate a race or racing driver, to celebrate models of car, or simply to celebrate the design styles associated with cars or bikes. There is a huge range of options from the most famous, such as the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona or the TAG Heuer Monaco, to new affordable microbrands like Omologato that produce limited edition watches based on racetracks around the world.
History of Automotive Watches
As soon as people were buying motorcars and motorbikes they started to race them. Cars were raced between towns and bikes were raced on oval tracks, and they were timed with stopwatches. Many famous Swiss names produced these such as Breitling, Longines, and Heuer. Heuer were the first company to file a patent for a clock to go on a car dashboard in 1905, and were very successful selling clocks and stopwatches for cars. At this time participants in car races timed themselves over the distance and carried the stop watch with them!
Watch companies did not advertise alongside car racing at this time, however a very famous Rolex advert for their Oyster watch in the 1930s featured Sir Malcom Campbell, who was regularly breaking land and water speed records. He was so delighted with the watch standing up to these amazing feats while keeping good time he allowed Rolex to use his comments in their ads. He even refused payment for these as he thought it dishonourable; a big difference to today’s celebrity and influencer culture!
Post-war tool watches and racing watches
Today, racing watches come in many forms and associated with different kinds of racing such as sailing, horse racing, skiing and of course, the Olympic Games. Tool watches came about in the early 1950s for such activities as diving and mountaineering, and the frist watch we can deifnitevley say was made for motor racing enthusiasts was the Omega Speedmaster, launched in 1957. This was the first was the first watch to feature a Tachymeter sscale on the Bezel. This allows the easy calculation of average speed. Assuming you know the distance covered, you time the vehicle moving across it, stop the chronograph hand, and then read the average speed from the scale. It was sold to racing enthusiasts around the world.
In 1963 Rolex launched their version, called the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona. It was originally going to be called the Le Mans, and has gone on to become one of the most famous watches in the world. Daytona is a racetrack in Florida in the USA, and the company has given a watch to the winner of the Daytona 500 race ever since. It also features a tachymetre dial and chronograph function.
In the 1960s, Heuer were led by Jack Heuer who was a big fan of Formula 1 racing. He decided the company should launch a new range of chronographs inspired by motor racing; the Heuer Carrera was born. It was named after a rally across Mexico held in the 1950s called the Carrera Panamerica. While the rally only lasted four years, the exotic name was good for Heuer, and he managed to get many Formula 1 drivers of the time to wear it. They company followed this up with the Heuer Monaco in 1969, simultaneously the first square, waterproof, automatic chronograph wristwatch. This watch was a huge success and remains an icon today.
Watch and car brand partnerships
There are many successful partnerships between car, bike and watch brands. One good example was Breitling for Bentley, a 17-year collaboration on a range of watches that had a distinct style and found many fans. Currently Breitling work with a range of car and bike companies, including Norton Motorcycles. The huge bike company Ducatti have worked with many watch companies over the years making both luxury and affordable timepieces.
Watch brands and Formula 1
Since Heuer found great success in the 1960s getting Formula 1 drivers to wear his watches, the glamour and excitement of the racing series led many watch brands to sponsor teams and drivers. There are many collaborations with teams like Ferrari, Williams Racing, Lotus, and the Red Bull teams. This is great news as these watches often feature the colours of the team or driver, logos, car-inspired design, and more. This gives collectors a huge range of options, and there are many bargains to be had if you’re willing to buy vintage and pre-owned pieces. The new watches tend to be limited editions and are sold at a premium.
Collecting Automotive or Racing watches
These watches are fantastic to collect as there are so many to look for, across many decades and every price point. They almost all feature chronographs, and often have great colours and additional design details. Just this week we saw one that had part of a brake disc contained within the case! The Watch Collectors’ Club is a place to see all kinds of collections in real-life, so if you’ve got an automotive or racing watch we’d love you to bring it along to one of our events.