The Breitling Watch Blog

Just posted a new video review of the Breitling Skyracer. Beautiful professional line watch from Breitling that replaced the B-2 and Hercules watches, using similar movement as the Hercules using the two-hand minute and hour chronograph totalizer but adding a date complication. Enjoy.

Drass, a company that has been manufacturing and designing dive equipment for years, has come out with a line of watches, made in Italy. They have three lines, the Tungum, Sat Dive Tungum and the Sat Dive line. All watches use the Selitta SW 200 movement, and come in either Stainless Steel or Tungum Pipe, which is a special type of metal used for saturation control panels and diving bells. Almost looks like Anonimo meets Breitling Numerals. The round Tungum line resembles the Manometro watch too… I’m disappointed with the lack of originality here.

Download the Drass Watch brochure here

Urwerk continues to innovate their Rare Species Collection with the addition of the White Shark to their collection, which is produced in a limited edition of 24 pieces. The watch features the caliber UR 7.02 movement, which has their patented revolving satelite complication for telling the time. The hours are shown on the point that is within the minute scale, and points to the current minute. What looks like a Moon Phase indicator is actually a Day-Night indicator, much to my chagrin! Day-Night moonphase look-a-likes are a pet peeve of mine.

While most automobile brands that associate themselves with watch brands tend to be exclusive in their partnerships, Mercedes seems to suprise with every new watch venture they embark on. Some of the brands that Mercedes has associated themselves with: IWC, Graham, Tag Heuer, Fabien Cacheux, Ulysse Nardin, and their own Brand created with Tourneau. There are very possibly others that I have missed too!

Most recently is the addition of Graham to the mix to celebrate the Mercedes GP Petronas Formula 1 Team. The Mercedes watch they introduced is kind of ugly in my opinion. Designed more in the style of Graham than Mercedes, and features lots of discord with the mix of design elements making a watch that is overall not too tasteful.

While Mercedes has chosen to associate themselves with so many brands, they have for the most part made tasteful watches. However, unlike Ferrari by Panerai and Breitling for Bentley, the watches have very little association with each other.

Personally, I think the most successful and tasteful Automobile and Watch team-ups would be Breitling for Bentley and Jaeger LeCoultre and Aston Martin. The most Epic Fail Automobile Watch brand would be Tonino Lamborghini. Why would you license your brand out to a company that cannot market your product properly? Didn’t the 80’s and 90’s teach companies anything about licensing your brand – now we see Tonino Lamborghini products fill the shelves in discount stores and ebay.

Here is a gallery of some of the Mercedes collaboration watches out there:

Breitling was the first watch that really caught my attention, and really resonated with me. I remember as a teenager I would go on Vacations and look at all the beautiful Breitling watches on display at various high-end department stores in Asia, the US and Europe. I would also be drawn to the Navitimers. I remember thinking to myself that one day I would own a Navitimer… and now I not only own a couple, but have owned almost a dozen of them from buying and selling.

My current favourite Navitimer is my Navitimer Montbrillant Datora:

Some of the different Breitling models I have owned over the years, many in multiples include: Super Avenger, Chrono Avenger, SuperOcean, SuperOcean Steelfish, Chronomat, Chronomat Evolution, Wings Automatic, Colt Automatic, B-1, B-2, Skyracer, Aerospace, Aerospace Avantage, Bentley Motors, Bentley Motors T, Navitimer, Old Navitimer, Navitimer Montbrillant Datora, Navitimer Montbrillant Legende, and several others I can’t remember!

However, in the end, since Breitling is the brand that I have had the most emotional investment in, my ultimate commemoration of the watch brand to myself was to have a matching pair of Breitling SuperOcean Heritage watches engraved to commemorate my marriage to my wife. I blogged about the matching SuperOceans it last year right before our wedding.

Here’s another peek:

In the end, Breitling was the right choice. We had looked at Rolex and felt that they might be appropriate due to their timeless design, but Rolex just didn’t resonate with us as something that was special to us. They make a great watch, and I love mine, but Breitling has had more impact on my life than any other brand, making it the obvious choice.

Thank you Breitling for enriching my life and allowing me to have something special that I can share with my wife!