Chopard Releases Racing Legend Jacky Ickx Chrono Limited Edition; Yema Gives Superman 500 GMT A Monochromatic Look; Victorinox Introduces New Dive Line; New From De Bethune And Bovet

In this issue:

• Chopard Teams Up With Racing Legend Jacky Ickx For The Classic Chronograph JX7 Limited Edition

• Yema Gives The Superman 500 GMT It’s Most Monochromatic Look To Date

• Victorinox Introduces A New Line Of Divers In Steel Or Titanium

• De Bethune Celebrate Their Complications By Integrating All Of Them Into One Watch, The DB Kind of Grande Complication

• The Bovet Récital 28 Prowess 1 Solves A Tough Problem: How To Make A World Timer That Takes Daylight Saving Time Into Account

Today’s reading time: 10 minutes and 25 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

Chopard Teams Up With Racing Legend Jacky Ickx For The Classic Chronograph JX7 Limited Edition

Jacky Ickx never won a Formula 1 World Championship. He came agonisingly close while driving for Ferrari in 1970, but the championship went to Jochen Rindt who was so dominant in the season that he won despite being tragically killed in his Lotus 72 during practice for the Italian Grand Prix. Ickx is the prime example that you don’t have to be F1 Champion to be considered an absolute legend. His humble and philosophical approach to racing made him a favorite among fans and other racers, but his legendary status came from 25 career F1 podiums, an incredible six wins at Le Mans and numerous appearances and one win in the Paris-Dakar rally. Ickx has also been great friends with Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, the Co-President of Chopard - a company well known for their racing connections, for over thirty years. To mark Ickx’s career and this friendship, Chopard is releasing is a duo of special edition Mille Miglia Classic Chronographs dedicated to Ickx and rendered in the blue that his helmets were famous for.

The watch is officially called the Chopard Mille Miglia Classic Chronograph JX7 and comes in a very familiar case that can be had in either Lucent Steel or Lucent Steel with 18-carat yellow gold highlights. The case measures 40.5mm wide and 12.88mm thick, with a 49mm lug-to-lug. On top is a box-style sapphire crystal. There are tiny car-related details all over this watch, bringing it almost uncomfortably close to the edge of being corny. Like, for example, the chronograph pushers which have a knurling on it to look like pedals in a car and the crown which has a steering wheel on it. The Lucent Steel version is all silver, while the bi-metal one gets the bezel, crown and pushers rendered in yellow gold.

Like I said, the dial is rendered in Ickx’s signature blue with a satin finish and it’s the same on both versions, except for the hands. They are baton shaped and rhodium-plated on the steel version and gilded in the bi-metal version. You get a white tachymeter scale on the edge of the dial, large Arabic numerals, a tri-compax setup with snailed sub-dials that have a running seconds at 3 o’clock, a 12-hour totaliser at 6, and a 30-minute one at 9. Unfortunately, Chopard continues with their insistence that there needs to be a date window at 4:30. Additionally, the date numerals 6 and 24 are highlighted in red, to mark the 6 wins at Le Mans.

Inside is a movement based on the ETA A322-11, which beats at 28,800vph and has a 54 hour power reserve. It’s COSC-certified, so that’s great. Speaking of car details that verge on corny, the watch comes on a midnight blue rubber strap that mimics the tread pattern of a 1960s Dunlop. Which is kind of funny, seeing as how Ferrari famously used Firestone tires which proved to be superior to Dunlop in the rain, conditions in which Ickx scored his mos significant wins.

The new Chopard Mille Miglia Classic Chronograph JX7 is limited to 250 pieces in steel and 50 in the steel-gold variant and come in a special presentation box with a miniature reproduction of the legendary Jacky Ickx owl-like helmet. The all-steel version is priced at €11,100, while the steel and gold variant is at €13,000. See more on the Copard website.

2/

Yema Gives The Superman 500 GMT It’s Most Monochromatic Look To Date

There are now some 17 versions of the Yema Superman 500. And seeing how that’s just one model line for the french brand, it’s pretty clear that they are no microbrand. Of course they aren’t, as they were started in the 1940s, grew to the largest exporter in France at 500,000 watches per year in the 1960s, fell from grace after the quartz crisis, only to be revived once again and are now approaching a decent 100,000 watches sold. And with such a diverse model line, Yema can now start drilling down to the tiniest details of their watches. This latest release from Yema is just one such attempt. They took the already popular GMT diver called the Yema Superman 500 GMT and gave it the new sapphire crystal bezel (already seen on several models) and a black and white monochrome colorway.

The same is the case of the watch, with its retro skin diver looks. The new Superman comes in two sizes - 39mm wide, 11.5mm thick, with a 48mm lug-to-lug or 41mm wide, 11.5mm thick and with a 49,5mm lug-to-lug. On top is a double domed sapphire crystal which has been reworked for the recent Superman redesign to give it an even stronger magnificent magnifying effect when looking through it from an angle for even stronger vintage vibes.

Surrounding the crystal is a bi-directional 24-hour graduated bezel made of scratch-resistant sapphire crystal. The bezel allows you to track up to three time zones, but this is rendered somewhat impractical with the bezel-lock that’s one of the defining characteristics of the Superman. I love the idea of this mechanism - it’s a tab that holds the serrated bezel from spinning when the crown is screwed down. This is amazing if you want to make sure it hasn’t accidentally slipped, but also means you need to unscrew the crown to adjust the bezel. While just impractical on land, it’s impossible to do in water, which is a shame because the regular Superman is a very capable diver with 500 meters of water resistance. Like I said, impractical, but I love it.

The bezel is the integral part of the new colorway as it’s split in half, with a white bottom part and black upper part. This works perfectly with the new dials, which can be had in either black or white. It seems that monochromatic might be in this year, and Yema is on top of this trend. The hour markers are dots of Super-LumiNova Grade A and the hands are polished steel. Interestingly, the GMT hand is black with a red arrow tip on both the white and black versions.

Inside is the in-house Caliber YEMA3000, an evolution of their YEMA2000. It has a 42 hour power reserve and is rated to be accurate to +/- 10 seconds per day. The watch can be had on a new reissue of the iconic Yema Scales bracelet from the 1960s in polished/brushed steel, featuring a new double security buckle with a diver extension. The bracelet looks amazing, but you can also opt for a regular stainless steel bracelet, a rubber band or a vintage leather strap. Your choice will affect the price.

The new Yema Superman 500 GMT is part of the regular collection and priced at €1.249 for the watch on the scales bracelet, regardless of the size you choose. See more on the Yema website.

3/

Victorinox Introduces A New Line Of Divers In Steel Or Titanium

The legendary Swiss company Victorinox makes what is arguably the best multitool - the Swiss Army Knife - you can buy, and I do not want to hear anything about how the Leatherman is better. But they make so much more, including watches. And their watches are not half bad. Joining the lineup of watches is the new Victorinox Dive Pro series which comes in eight different configurations, with either a steel or titanium and a choice of quartz or automatic movement.

While the materials might vary, the size of the new Dive Pro case remains the same. These are chunky divers that measure 43mm wide and 14mm thick. They also look to be very long with angular cuts in the case and lugs, but Victorinox doesn’t give us a lug-to-lug measurement. There are slight differences between the quartz and automatic versions, with the quartz having their crown at 3 o’clock and automatic at 4. On top of the watch are bezels fashioned out a single piece of metal and engraved with the 60 minute scale and strong facets. The bezel surrounds a flat sapphire crystal. Water resistance is 300 meters.

The dials are also extremely similar, with slight differences depending on the movement isnide. The automatic versions feature horizontal lines embossed into their center sections and a day and date displays at 3 o’clock, while the quartz models have a smooth dial and no day display. The hour and minute hands both feature a partially skeletonized design, with lumed tops and thin rectangular frames with an additional piece sticking out from the end at the end of the minute hand. A very funky look.

As for the colorways, two of the quartz models can be had in the stainless steel cases with either a black dial with yellow accents or a dark blue dial with orange accents. The other two quartz watches come in the titanium cases and both have black dials with yellow accents, it’s the bracelets that are different. One comes with a yellow rubber strap which matches the details, while the other has a handwoven black paracord strap. The automatics get the same colorway combinations, with the addition of a striped seconds hand.

Inside the quartz versions is the Ronda 715 Swiss quartz movement, while the automatics get the Sellita SW220 which beats at 28,800vph and has a 38 hour power reserve.

Pricing is decent, but not great. The stainless steel quartz versions are priced at $800, while the titanium ones are priced at $1,100. The automatics will run you $1,200 for the steel and $1,500 for the titanium. See more on the Victorinox website.

 4/

De Bethune Celebrate Their Complications By Integrating All Of Them Into One Watch, The DB Kind of Grande Complication

Over the past 22 years, since it was founded, De Bethune has incorporated eight distinct complication in the dozens of models they released. De Bethune is famous for focusing on high-tech and modern design, while employing the strategies of classical craftsmanship. To celebrate their 22 years, De Bethune is releasing the De Bethune DB Kind of Grande Complication that incorporates the eight complications into one watch.

The case is the first impressive thing you’ll see. First, it’s incredibly compact for what it is - 43.3mm wide and an incredible 13.85mm thick (or, thin). Made out of polished grade 5 titanium, the watch is framed by a floating cage that acts as the lugs and houses a round case inside. This allows the watch to spin on it’s X axis and give you two watch faces. The crown is at noon on the front side and at 6 o’clock on the reverse.

And De Bethune uses the two watches to show how radically different their approaches to watchmaking are. On one side is a very contemporary looking face, with a highly polished deltoid bridge making up the center of the dial. This side shows off the 30-second tourbillon, the retrograde age of the Moon, the power reserve indication and the time. The hands are blued and made out of titanium, while the seconds are centrally mounted and jumping, one of the craziest mechanical complications of all. Positioned beneath the deltoid bridge on the right side of the dial is the silver-toned track revealing the age of the Moon.

Rotate the watch and you’re greeted with a very classical face, with an opaline white disc and classical Roman numerals representing the hours and the Arabic numerals for the minutes surrounding the central blued mirror-polished titanium night sky. Both hands are pontifex shaped and gold. This side of the dial shows the perpetual calendar and a 3D moon phase display with a leap year indication. The rectangular apertures for the day of the week and month have blue backgrounds and gilded inscriptions. The date is indicated on a raised blued ring with gilded numerals and indicated by a yellow gold hand.

All of this is powered by a beast of a movement, the manual-winding calibre DB2529. It beats fast at 5Hz, but despite that it still has a 4 day power reserve thanks to self-regulating twin barrels. The watch comes on a alligator leather strap with alligator lining and a polished titanium pin buckle.

The De Bethune DB Kind of Grande Complication will likely be limited by production, but not in actual numbers, and it is priced at CHF 400,000. See more on the De Bethune website.

5/

The Bovet Récital 28 Prowess 1 Solves A Tough Problem: How To Make A World Timer That Takes Daylight Saving Time Into Account

I was wearing the Ace X Frederique Constant Highlife Worldtimer Amsterdam watch a couple of weeks ago as the global crapshow regarding Daylight Savings Time was going on. You see, not all countries switch their time on the same day. And not all countries use DST, only about 70 do. And for almost a month, the spectacular FC Worldtimer (review coming on Monday, keep your eyes peeled), the world timing function was completely broken, necessitating a reminded that the time is actually one hour off. This is a problem that all worldtimer watches face. All, except for the new Bovet Récital 28 Prowess 1, the first watch to solve this problem. It took them five years of development to get to it.

The Récital 28 Prowess 1 comes in a choice of three cases - polished pink gold, platinum or grade 5 titanium and a truly substantial size. It measures 46.3mm wide and an incredible 17.85mm thick. The dial’s inner and outer rings are made of aventurine.

Not that the dial matters much, as it’s mostly openworked to show the ingenous way of solving the DST problem. Instead of showing the world cities on one disc, Bovet shows the cities and time zones on rollers. Each of the 24 rollers has four positions that can be switched by pressing the crown: UTC, AST (American Summer Time), EAS (Europe and America Summer Time), and EWT (European Winter Time) which can be read on an additional roller at the left-hand side of the worldtime indication.

In addition to this remarkable feat, the movement powering the Récital 28 Prowess 1 features a flying tourbillon, a perpetual calendar with roller-based indications, and an in-house movement with a 10-day power reserve. The watch comes on a alligator strap and secured by a folding buckle

The Bovet Récital 28 Prowess 1 is limited in production to only 8 pieces per year and priced between CHF 650,000 and 690,000. See more on the Bovet website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

1/

A review of the Christopher Ward C65 Dune GMT In White Sand And Khaki Green

2/

Hands-On with the Grand Seiko SLGH021

3/

A review of the new colorless Tudor 41mm Black Bay

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

The Good+Evil Omen disregards all the rules to make a simple but useful watch

Designed by Christo Logan, an architect, and designer based in Brooklyn, NYC, the Omen struck me first as a modern, minimalist update to the offbeat and off-center watches of the 70s. Similar to the Moels & Co 528, the Omen dives deep into modern design aesthetics with clean lines, simple curves, and precision machining.

Read the whole review on The Time Bum

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• With all the talk that AI will replace every single living being as soon as we let it, you would expect that this tech was conceived by many smart scientists in lab coats, locked into a secret government facility built on a floating oil rig or something. Well, modern AI started something like that, only the complete opposite. This is the inside story of how 8 Google employees met by chance, got hooked on an idea, and wrote the “Transformers” paper - the most consequential tech breakthrough in recent history - that set the basis for modern AI.

• Ryan Breslow rode his fintech unicorn Bolt to the bank. Then came the lawsuits and money squabbles and a brutal valuation crash that wiped out much of his fortune. This is the billion-dollar unraveling of the 'King' of Silicon Valley.

• Roger Williamson claims to be the illegitimate son of the late Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and another billionaire’s bookkeeper. But the only thing about his life that’s rich are the lies it's built upon.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

If you don’t know about Hot Ones, go watch this video. It’s a completely ingenious interview format where the hosts and the guest each eat 10 hot wings with the sauces getting increasingly hotter to an almost unbearable level. Of course this makes for great viewing and Sean Evans, the host, is an incredible interviewer. This one with Conan O’Brine is the best Hot Ones interview to date, so you’re in for a treat.

If, on the other hand, you know about Hot Ones or are a fan, go watch this right now. Conan once again proves why he is a complete genius and the best of the late night shows.