The Fourth Wheel, Issue 10
Sometimes records are smashed, sometimes they're shaved
Since I started the Fourth Wheel, a couple of people have asked if there’s really enough to talk about in watches every week. In this issue alone we have record-breaking engineering, a new podcast reviewed, business news, Instagram games, a crop of cool new launches, and that time the founder of the Ballet Russes threw a Cartier clock at Igor Stravinsky. So… yep. There’s enough. Strap in, it’s a bumper issue.
Your questions answered
But first! I promised to answer any reader questions and several of you have obliged. Keep them coming - here’s the link - and periodically I’ll answer a batch. Thank you very much to those who have been in touch.
Do you have a favourite big brand and why and same for an independent? - Al
A few questions have followed similar lines and I have to say: picking favourites is hard. Really hard. Like most people in the watch world, I’m exposed to so many more watches than I can ever hope to own, from hundreds of makers. And it is an ever-changing business: the TAG Heuer of 2011 is not the TAG Heuer of 2022, to take one example. So the quick answer is no, I don’t have one favourite brand. But there are some that I lean towards.1
Big brands: Omega, Tudor, Nomos, Oris, Zenith, Bulgari, Chopard, Jaeger-LeCoultre
Independent brands: MB&F, Laurent Ferrier, H. Moser, Voutilainen, Ressence and Atelier de Chronometrie.
One watch, no budget: the one watch collection…what do you choose? - Justin
See above! Leaving aside the philosophical nit-picking that one watch really isn’t a collection at all… where do you even start? People like the ‘two watch’ or ‘three watch’ thought experiment, but one single watch? Total horological monogamy?
If it could be done, which it can’t, should it be a watch that’s good for all eventualities, or just the watch you yearn for more than any other? I’ll show my working, in the hope that’s worth some marks when I eventually bottle out of giving an answer.
It would be easy to opt for something like an 1815 Chronograph or Overseas Ultra-Thin, as watches on my lottery-win list. But if I had to wear the watch all the time, they feel a little over-the-top. My head says pick a watch with usable complications like travel time, and I think it would have to be a chronograph. That’s a very common combo - but the general problem is that the sporty options are just too big. The Bulgari Octo Finissimo Chronograph, perhaps, enters my thinking. As do a couple of worldtimer chronographs - maybe I could do a lot worse than a Patek Philippe 5930G, but a daily wearer in white gold? If I’m forced to live in the world of real, currently-available watches, I might just plump for the Zenith Chronomaster Original and never mind the travel time. But as Justin offers an unlimited budget, and if I took a blank cheque to Thierry Stern I could be pretty confident of persuading him to listen to my request, I’d commission the one and only Patek Philippe 5930A-001/A, a stainless steel worldtimer chronograph with a dark blue dial on a (swappable) five-link steel bracelet with a simple fabric pin-buckle in the box.
10 issues in, what do you find you're enjoying writing a newsletter that you weren't getting out of writing at Mr. P? And vice versa: what does Mr. P give that a humble Substack doesn't? - Tony
Writing this newsletter is a chance to speak my mind and cover all aspects of the watch world, in a more civilised and long-form format than social media allows, and to have a bit of fun. It’s pure, it offers me complete control, and its success or failure will be all my own.
At Mr Porter I’m part of a wonderful editorial team; I have a strategy, a schedule, a process, a budget, commercial considerations and professional responsibilities. It offers me a fantastic platform, I reach a very different audience and get to do some interesting and ambitious things. And they pay me, which is useful.
Brands you see the most value in at different price points (sub £1k; £3-£5k; and over £5k)? - Michael
Under £1,000: there are options but if in doubt, buy a Seiko Prospex.
Between £3,000 and £5,000: Oris, Nomos, Tudor, Longines (Heritage only). This is a massive sector and there is a LOT more to say about value here, but outside of this list I think I’d be recommending specific watches, rather than entire brands where (in my opinion) the vast majority of their range represents good value.
Above £5,000: ‘Value’ starts to get even more subjective. There’s value in a Roger Smith, if you’ve got £100,000 and are prepared to wait. But taking the question as I feel it might be intended, my value tip is this: buy the base-level model of a classic - the Seamaster Diver 300M, or Pilot’s Chronograph, or Luminor Marina. When you start shopping the limited editions or exciting case materials, the increase in price is not buying you a better watch per se, it’s buying you a more exclusive one. To many people, that’s value of a different sort, of course.2 But in terms of pure watchmaking-to-the-pound, the vanilla version comes out in front.
Thanks for writing in! More questions answered soon
It’s A Thin Excuse For A Story
On Wednesday, Richard Mille launched its latest collaborative watch with Ferrari, and by the time it had wafted, feather-like, down to earth, the internet was absolutely a-clamour with awe, interest, and huge amounts of sarcasm. The 0-60 on memes and puns was record-setting in itself3.
Because if you haven’t already heard, this is the new thinnest watch in the world, at just 1.75mm from top to bottom. It’s barely believable to look at. I haven’t seen or held it but I’ve spent time with the ultra-thin offerings from Bulgari and Piaget and watches like this do genuinely baffle the mind.
Seven years ago the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Squelette held the record for thinnest watch in production4 at 3.6mm thick (taking the record from Piaget by 0.05mm). Piaget snatched the record back in 2018 with the Altiplano Ultimate Concept, which measured 2mm thick, and that was such a margin of victory - Usain Bolt-like in its total demolition of previous standards - that we thought it would stand; but Bulgari had already been making ultra-thin waves, and took a swing at the outright title this year when it released the 1.8m thick Octo Finissimo Ultra. I think Jack Forster summed things up pretty well in his comprehensive review when he said that:
“Lord knows if Bulgari's output over the last eight years has taught us anything it's that you shouldn't assume anything about the unbreakability of records, but it is very difficult to imagine anyone besting the Ultra for a record in thinnest mechanical watch ever, and indeed other than bragging rights I can't imagine why anyone would bother to try at this point.”
Not three months later, Richard Mille has nipped in having never previously even hinted at an interest in ultra-thin watchmaking (a cold four-bet, us poker players would call it) and made the RM UP-01 Ferrari.5
Is he bragging? The press release doesn’t mention breaking the record once. Which is kind of the ultimate brag, really, a mic-drop of perfectly calculated proportions. “Oh, sorry you guys, were you - were you competing to make thin watches? We just thought this would be, like, cool. Is it thinner than yours? We hadn’t noticed. How neat.”
Of course, in the pursuit of ultra-thin watchmaking, a few compromises are necessary. You can’t have a full-sized dial, no thick sapphire crystal, no ordinary crown… you can’t even have an overcoil on the hairspring. The two enemies of thinness are reliability and structural integrity - as well as the dozens of wits on Instagram pointing out that it looks like a credit card (and what an RM or Ferrari owner might use a credit card for), enough people made the point that it really does look like it will bend if you strap it on your wrist too tight. It’s nearly entirely made from grade five titanium, so I’m prepared to say it probably will hold up, but Piaget felt the need to develop an entirely new alloy for its AUC, and that’s got the advantage of being not only thicker but narrower and round. So who knows. It’s also likely to be nigh-on impossible to service, even if you don’t ding it against the door of your SF90 one day.
Why, you might ask, am I talking about the everyday liveability of such a watch? These are experimental pieces after all, pushing the envelope; eccentric, oddball watches that grab headlines but exist in tiny numbers. Ah, well, that’s where you’re wrong. Richard Mille says it will make 150 of these. Given that RM only makes 5,000 watches annually, that means this record-breaking marvel of insanely difficult engineering (well done APRP) is basically a core collection piece. It’ll take them a few years to deliver, sure, but for context: Bulgari is making ten of the Octo Finissimo Ultra; Piaget never said how many Altiplano Ultimate Concepts will be made but I’ll eat my shoes if it’s into double figures.
This is the real statement made by the launch - making a watch this thin is very hard, but doable; Fabrizio Buonamassa at Bulgari said as much to Hodinkee - it could be 1.5mm thick, but probably wouldn’t work very well. Making them at volume and expecting them to be lived with, that’s serious.
So is the price tag. The RM UP-01 Ferrari costs $1.9m each. Some have pointed out (with various degrees of hand-wringing despair about What This Means For Capitalism And Society) that from one launch alone RM stands to make more than a quarter of a billion dollars. (Fun fact, it’ll be more than Piaget’s entire turnover in 2021 and not that far behind Bulgari’s). This is obviously insane, but all I can say is: that’s Richard Mille. It’s a phenomenon like no other. Will it sell out? I wouldn’t bet against it. There are 2,700 billionaires in the world, after all. It reminds me of the possibly apocryphal story that at the launch of a particularly expensive watch (it varies in the telling - as I first heard it, it was the original all-sapphire RM-056) by Richard Mille, Max Busser walked across the halls at SIHH and shook Mille’s hand - not to congratulate him on the watch but to thank him for making MB&F’s watches look affordable by comparison. I think when we look back in years to come, you’ll be able to make a compelling case that for all the unarguably fantastic mechanical developments Richard Mille’s lasting legacy on the watch world will be redefining the upper limit of what people will spend on a watch.
The Richard Mille craziness rather blew a few other new watch launches out of the water, but I wanted to call them out so, rapid-fire, here we go:
Greubel Forsey’s Tourbillon 24 Secondes Architecture proves that they can make smooth round cases if they really think hard about it, and also that for incredible finishing there are few, if any, others that can match up. Stunning, stunning watch (and so much cheaper than a Richard Mille too!).
Gronefeld’s 1941 Gronograaf might be my favourite new chronograph of the year. For some reason it speaks to me so much more than the more accomplished MB&F. I love that there are people who will market a six-figure watch with a pun. I love the seconds hand that almost spans the dial. I love the movement. I hate the python leather strap in all the press pics, but luckily that’s optional.
Bell & Ross’s BR05 Artline is the opposite end of the spectrum entirely, but I think it’s a cracker. I didn’t like the BR05 when it launched - I might have described it as the Fisher Price Nautilus - but I’ve done a complete U-turn. The GMT, the Lum one, and now this, it all just really works. Hats off.
Breitling’s new Superocean collection; I haven’t seen it in person but it looks so, so much more fun than the previous design. My hunch is that the 46mm will be far too big, the 44mm a bit too big, the 42mm ok but actually, the microscopic-by-comparison 36mm in all orange is quite possibly the connoisseur’s choice.
Quick Links
It’s About Effing Time… the new podcast from George Bamford, Adrian Barker and Andrew McUtchen
From the trailer, the graphics and the heavy rock music, this bills itself as the rebellious new kid of watch podcasts, all cigarettes behind the bike sheds, untucked shirts and detention on a Friday. It’s got a pleasingly chaotic mood, but once things settled down, slipped a bit too easily into a familiar pattern of ‘let’s take turns to tell you about a watch I like’. More drinks breaks, more attitude, more silliness, that’s what we need - and dare I say it, less watches? I like all three hosts personally so it was easy listening, but it’s about effing time we had something truly daringly different in this space.GB Talks with Chris Hall, on Laurent Ferrier and Le Mans
Whoops, this is awkward. I popped up on George’s other podcast this week, telling one of my favourite stories in watches - how a quiet, genial watchmaker who looks a bit like off-duty Santa Claus once finished on the podium at Le Mans. 220mph in a Porsche 935 on the weekend, assembling Patek Philippe calibres on the Monday. Doesn’t quite happen like that these days.The Launch of the Watch Library Foundation, on Europa Star
This sounds a tad boring but also pretty important. The whole watch industry is essentially in the business of legacy management, so any efforts to improve, preserve and digitise the fragmented history are to be applauded.Interview: Pierre Rainero, Guardian of Cartier’s Heritage, on SJX
Containing, as promised, the story - with regrettably little detail - of the time someone threw a Cartier clock at Stravinsky’s head. And a Picasso painting of Stravinsky, showing his Cartier Tonneau, which is pretty cool.
And finally…
You didn’t know there was such a thing as an haute horlogerie hourglass, did you? But you do now, and you want one.
Am I the only one hooked on Watch Professor, aka Carson Chan’s daily Instagram Stories game of name-that-watch-brand? It’s harder than you think. Keep it coming!
Congrats to A Collected Man for making it into the Sunday Times list of the 100 fastest growing companies in the UK.
This was harder than I could have imagined and by no means does it mean I don’t like brands not mentioned. I have a lot of time for AP, Vacheron, Patek, Rolex, Lange, Cartier, IWC, TAG Heuer, Breitling, Grand Seiko (the list goes on, and on, and on) but as a purely personal selection, that’s where I land.
To judge by the market in the last decade, people place a much higher value on exclusivity than simple specifications. It feeds into a bit of a paradox: brands want to sell more watches; demand is highest for limited editions; you end up with so many limited edition watches everyone has one. Another reason to buy the base model.
My favourite puns were ‘Richard Millemeter’ and ‘let’s buy a few and make a Mille-feuille’
The all-time record is held by a quartz watch called the Concord Delirium
In a motoring context, I can’t see ‘UP’ in the model name and not think of the VW Up, which is, in its own way, a pretty minimalist piece of engineering.