The Fourth Wheel, Issue 91

AMA Extended Bonus Edition: Were vintage watches actually better? What to make of the Urwerk UR-102? Just how do celebs get the hottest watches? And should you buy a Breitling Navitimer?

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that loves answering your questions. Honestly, I really do love it. It has been great to have enough questions to fill two newsletters - if you’re reading this and have burning enquiries of your own, there will be an AMA on or around Issue 100, so send them in and I’ll save them - but I am also considering some exciting plans for the Big Centenary Of Weekly Emails.

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Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Issue 90: Ask Me Anything
Where Are All The Risk-Takers?
What Was The Greatest Era Of Chronograph Watchmaking?
What To Expect In 2024
The Best And Worst Watch Brand Websites

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Ask Me Anything (Again)

Here we go - with thanks and apologies to those who didn’t have their questions answered last week!

Many watch fans denigrate modern industrial watch production techniques as soulless or low quality. Yet there is no question the Industrial Age has yielded higher precision and larger volume manufacturing, allowing goods to be more widely available and uniformly solid in quality if done right. Were knockabout watches from the 30s / 40s / 50s really that much better than a Lord Marvel in the 1980s or Seiko 5 from the 90s in terms of build quality, performance, or longevity? - Alvin

This could be a three-thousand word feature on the evolution and impact of manufacturing techniques and quality control in the Swiss watch industry. But I’ll try and keep it briefer than that.

As a rule, our ability to create mechanical objects has only improved over time. There are some exceptions, where institutional memory is lost and high-quality craftsmanship is replaced by mass production, but on the whole, automation beats artisanal every day of the week if you’re talking about reliability and build quality. Leaving aside the charm and character, if you had to get where you were going, would you rather drive a car from the 1960s, panel-beaten and hand-welded, or the latest flawless machine from a Korean production line?

So much, you already addressed in the question. What, if anything, has been lost - and are today’s watches soulless thanks to their quality… these are harder to answer definitively.

I would venture that there is a sweet spot. If you were to plot a line graph where ‘human involvement in production’ and ‘build quality’ (an impossible, complicated quality) could be measured against time, their lines would cross at a point where watches benefited from a significant number of advancements in materials science and technical prowess, but also had enough humans involved in their construction to ensure that no corners were being cut in the name of maximising profit margin¹. This time in history may not have existed; it may be a fantasy. I would specify the introduction of computer aided design, CNC machining, sapphire crystal, Super-Luminova and possibly spark erosion as the vital developments needed for a mass-produced tool watch or everyday beater to be as well built as is realistic, for the price, and that puts us squarely in the 1990s. Obviously, the watch industry was only just getting back on its feet after a period of intense disruption, but this makes me wonder… in the absence of the so-called quartz crisis, would mechanical watchmaking have reached a state of perfection by about 1995? Obviously going down a counter-factual rabbit hole is a complicated business, but if you can imagine a watch industry that remained well-staffed, produced necessary and useful goods (as opposed to luxury goods), yet was equipped with most of what we today consider modern manufacturing technology… I think that would be pretty much it.² Everything since - going out on a limb here - is really in the category of marginal gains, with the possible exception of silicon components. As to whether these watches would have soul… that I don’t know.

Every athlete, rapper and celeb seems to be sporting AP these days. I wonder if they are given to them as a kind of product placement or do they just get access that a Joe Blow like me can’t get? - Larry Seiden

The murky world of celebrity product placement isn’t one I inhabit full time, but I have accrued a few insights over the years. Leaving brand ambassadors and ‘friends of the brand’ to one side - because their access to watches is self-explanatory - this kind of thing breaks down in a few different ways.

Firstly, the richer and more successful you are, the more people will give you for free. I’m not saying this is AP’s approach specifically, but in general, being a top athlete, movie star or musician is like running through Harrods covered in double-sided tape and carrying a powerful vacuum cleaner in each hand. Fashion and luxury brands will happily write off the cost if there’s a chance it’ll result in some ‘organic’ publicity. This isn’t news to anyone, of course, and we’re all familiar with the fact that celebs are styled in/given clothes, watches and whatever else as part of highly lucrative deals, but I think the amount of speculative ‘gifting’ that goes on behind the scenes would shock a lot of people - to be in a big star’s entourage is to stand a good chance of picking up some of this unwanted luxury clutter.

Secondly, if they’re not giving it away, watch brands or retailers will have particular salespeople - personal shoppers, we call them at Mr Porter - whose client lists focus on this kind of A-list talent, and those customers’ shopping habits will get them to the front of most waiting lists. This is how guys like Mark Wahlberg or Lionel Messi always have the latest Patek Philippe. It starts as soon as you achieve a degree of fame, and has been the case for many years - we have an interview coming up on Mr Porter with former England international footballer Jermaine Jenas, who recalled the ‘local jeweller’ who would come to the stadium with a suitcase full of Rolexes and say ‘pick one for yourself and one for the missus’. You might think things have come a long way since then, but I think actually a lot of business, especially in the world of sports, is still quite old-school. There are young guns shaking up the scene though - Sam Morgan made his name as a teenager selling hyped-up sneakers to sports stars and now runs a massively successful business as the go-to-guy for Premier League stars in search of hard-to-get streetwear; it made perfect sense that he would branch into watches. Check out his Instagram - it’s full of the Nautiluses, RMs and Royal Oaks that he’s sourced for sporting superstars. How does he get the watches? Years spent building up players’ trust, that’s how - the brands will happily go through a middleman in exchange for his level of access.

We’ve strayed a little from the question. AP under Francois Bennahmias was the original celeb watch brand, and established a reputation in those circles that’s now heavily entrenched. I’m not saying all rappers, footballers, basketball players and DJs are alike, or that they’re unimaginative in their tastes, but there is a strong element of friendly competition among your peers. They’ve got the chrono? You’ll get the perpetual calendar. Then they get the tourbillon, and on it goes.

Urwerk UR-102: what is your take? - Vitaily Liberman

In 91 issues of The Fourth Wheel, I don’t think I’ve written about Urwerk. So this is a nice chance to change that.