Watches are also good at hiding secrets.
I am not referring to the ability to hide the hour behind a jewel, for example, as in Chanel’s recent Mademoiselle Privé Bouton, but to surround oneself with a mysterious aura.
Today I want to talk to you about the Cartier Crash, a watch that only one of the most authoritative luxury watchmakers could create.
If you look at it, it is immediate to think that replica Cartier was inspired by the famous Salvator Dalì watches. The artist immortalized them in two paintings: the first entitled “persistence of memory” from 1931 and to follow in the “soft clocks” of 1954.
But behind the Crash and its irregular shapes there is more and not the usual story with a pinch of magic that accompanies most of the timepieces that have become famous. He was not born of a polo match like Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso, nor how the Omega Speedmaster with the Apollo 13 crew has ever saved lives.
There are two unconfirmed legends about him that both take us back to London in the late 1960s.
The first relates that a lady would have gone to the Cartier service center to ask to have her Bagnoire repaired, which was damaged in an accident.
The other says that in the mid-1960s the vice-president of Cartier who was in London had a serious car accident where he lost his life. The car that had caught fire due to the crash trapped the man who wore a Cartier on his wrist and the flames caused his liquefaction.
Following this sad episode, Jean-Jacques Cartier who headed the London branch at the time would have designed the Crash in memory of his late senior official fake rolex.
If among these three theses we believe in those of the accident, the watch from which the idea would have sprung was certainly a Cartier Baignoire Allongée – in Italian “elongated bathtub”. That model has always stood out for the shape of the very high case in which the Crash finds itself perfectly.
However it went, making it was a brilliant idea and that, as it was for the Tank, generated an authentic icon.
The Cartier Crash was first put on sale in 1967 at the London boutique. In reality, this timepiece should not be considered only for its unique shapes: its mechanics were not far behind. In fact, the first model was fitted with a manually wound movement in a form made by Jaeger-LeCoultre.
Thinking about how perfectly every irregular curve of the case resumes is enough to understand how easy it is to get an idea but, especially at the time when the quartzes had not yet been seen, building it must have been a great challenge.
Evidently Cartier took this watch very seriously. To insert a round standard caliber and leave some nice holes around it, as was often the case in shaped watches of the time, it must not have even been mentioned.
The fact is that today the first models hit staggering figures in auctions.
Over the years, the Maison, which has also distinguished itself for other famous shaped watches such as the Tank Asymetrique, has created several versions of its soft watch, including for women and skeletonized the latter always animated by shaped movements.
In 2018 it was the turn of a limited edition of 50 pieces called Cartier Crash Radieuse. Not much is known about its 8970 MC movement, but it shouldn’t be as shaped as the 9618 MC caliber that moves the skeleton model. In fact, it is the same mechanism that animates the Cartier Libre Tank Folle also with irregular shapes but far from those of the Crash.
In conclusion, vintage or modern, the Cartier Crash is not a watch for everyone: regardless of its mysterious air, its unique shapes still make it a masterpiece of creativity.
