Yes, this blog is about Ferrari watches. A little while ago my interest in watches got a new boost. It's not unusual for classic car owners to have an interest in watches. So far I only spend once serious money on a watch and to my surprise I rarely have worn it. Personally I have more interest in matching Automobilia. Recently I purchased an original Ferrari wind jacket, it's an original one from early the eighties produced by Italstyle
This is the jacket in question. I mostly bought it to shock people and have a laugh.
Clearly I'm aware of the fact that Ferrari also had watches produced. Just like the clothing and other merchandise this is often purchased by people who doesn't own one. Apparently Ferrari does make more profit with their merchandise (and logo rights) rather than the actual car business.
Since I have an official Ferrari mechanic shirt (by Cerutti) as well I thought I needed to extend this with an original watch.
Clearly it had to be a time period correct watch. In fact I believe I had this on my radar for a while but I always considered them slightly tacky (and mabye a waste of money). After a little investigation I figured it had to be a Longines. These were in fact the first official serie produced watches for Ferrari. And as I know by now they signed the contract in December 1979 and became official timekeeper for Ferrari. Prior to this it was Tag Heuer.
As my car is from 1979 it does make sense to get ahold of this specific watch model. When continuing my research I bumped into the official brochure in English (available in the download section).
And to my surprise it had this photo in it:
And as you can see it does have the Ferrari 365GT4 2+2 on the wall. How cool is that? Clearly this was the sign for me to continue the hunt. And as a reminder, Piero once had a 400i as well
During my search I noticed there were a few variants available so I had to work out the models and types. Effectively they produced one model for male, female and for something in between, let's say unisex.
Apart from the size the distinction can be seen by the location of the date. The male watch has it located at 6 and the female/unisex at 3, and the strap sizes are each different in size, see example below
All models are using Quartz and are made in stainless steel with gold plating.
The dials are available in three colors: White, Black and Gilt
Furthermore the dials are optional with Roman numerals or bar markers.
And I noticed one variant with the Roman numerals, which is per quarter only rather than each hour.
And there is one more variant available with the above options. Instead of the name Ferrari printed on the dial it is also available with the prancing horse logo.
And more thing, I have seen a few watches whereby the bracelets did not had the screw pins. Looks very original though and it was not a one-off (I like the clean looks - a proper dress watch). And by now my guess is these straps were available for the 1985 and 1986 series (the last produced).
I'm unsure till when these were produced since in the early eighties Ferrari closed a new deal with Cartier and launched the Ferrari Formula accessories line (watches & pens). The Longines timekeeping deal lasted at least till 1986 and was renewed in 1988.
To briefly touch base on the Ferrari Formula Watches (by Cartier). Apparently these watches were still developed and produced by Longines, I captured this quote from an online article (source at the bottom of this blog):
it was Longines in St-Imier that took care of product development and production and also some designs."
And to make it more interesting the Ferrari Formula watches by Cartier had a quartz chrono movement by Seiko, model 7a38. How's that!? The Longines Ferrari watch however does remind me very much about the Cartier Santos model, it's quite similar. Interesting to see how this all links together.
For the records, I tracked these reference numbers on the Longines watches, other then a connection to the gender I could not figure out a relation to a year or dial options (ie roman/bar markers or color):
3238 male
4870 male
4888 female
4897 unisex
4908 unisex
4909 male
4919 female
4920 male
Furthermore I found this package box, not sure if there were different ones:
It took a little effort but I bought one. For some unknown reason it got almost stuck for 3 weeks in Dutch customs. I feared I had to pay import duties but luckily this didn't happen. Note, despite it's a male model the size is very moderate, about 31 mm x 30 mm.
So here it is, click to enlarge:
And last but not least, the adverts - unfortunately none with a 400 as a prop but instead the BB, 308 and Mondial are used though:
