Few trendy watchmakers measure as much as Cartier in terms of century-old, but evergreen, designs. We really feel like we might write a e-book on Cartier watch design evolution — however we’ll spare you that and as an alternative will shift focus instantly to the new-for-2020 Cartier Santos-Dumont XL Hand-Wind watch assortment, a variety of three new watches, all with a Piaget-derived hand-wound motion, lowered costs, and now a metal variant.
The Cartier Santos has performed a serious position in carving the trail not just for pilot’s watches, but additionally for males’s watches, basically. In its greater than a century-long historical past, the Santos has been many issues to many individuals — however maybe most of us will bear in mind it because the chunky (nearly too chunky) Santos XL that was a star of the late 2000s and early 2010s, adopted by the nonetheless somewhat cumbersome Santos 100 (reviewed right here).
Left to proper: A 1916 Cartier Santos “WCL88A16” and a 1912 Santos, “one of many very first Santos created by Cartier” in response to the model.
Nice watches in their very own proper, all of them lacked a few of the delicacy of the earliest Cartier Santos watches. The Santos-Dumont assortment, with that notable “-Dumont” extension to its title, marks a distinctly completely different take that roves within the path of these smaller watches with a lot refinement to their proportions.
That development continues within the Cartier Santos-Dumont XL Hand-Wind watches for 2020, which can be found in three variations: 18okay pink gold, two-tone with 18okay pink gold and metal, and an all-steel variant. All termed “extra-large” by Cartier, they measure 46.6mm by 33.9mm and are a powerful 7.5mm-thick. That skinny profile is attained by the usage of an exceptionally skinny, Piaget-derived Cartier 430MC caliber that measures solely 2.15mm-thick.
On condition that solely the very newest ultra-thin actions are able to stretching energy reserve, this older (however confirmed) 430P/430MC caliber presents a shorter 38-hour energy reserve matched to a slower 21,600bph working frequency. In observe, meaning you’ll wish to be winding this magnificence each single day — a gratifying chore, to make certain.
If you wish to save no less than a couple of thousand — if neither winding your watches nor hiring a Watch Butler is a chance for you — then you definitely’ll be pleased to study that Cartier presents the Santos-Dumont within the “massive” dimension with a quartz motion and six years of autonomy. Launched final yr, these “massive” Santos-Dumont items have case dimensions of 43.5mm by 31.4mm and a thickness of seven.3mm.
Getting again to the The Cartier Santos-Dumont XL Hand-Wind assortment, my solely small gripe with these, as a watch-lover, is the truth that the crown is your solely interplay and your solely indicator of the presence of a hand-wound motion… To be honest, there’s additionally “mécanique” written in small fonts on the caseback. A working seconds could be as a lot a sacrilege as a date window on this design, however an open caseback, even with only a small aperture someplace, revealing the bridges lined with the Cartier “C” throughout, would have been a pleasant little contact. A working seconds window or energy reserve on the again actually would have been subsequent degree — but additionally possible would’ve entailed a rise in worth. Cartier doesn’t seem to supply caseback photos, so that you’ll have to make use of your creativeness to image a stable caseback with some textual content on it.
Pricing for the Cartier Santos-Dumont XL Hand-Wind watches is but to be confirmed, however they need to vary round €four,700 for metal, a aggressive €6,500 for two-tone, and €12,500 for the stable 18okay pink gold model, and you can begin looking for one in every of these in Cartier boutiques beginning in Might. A design of excellent class, powered by a slim mechanical motion and encapsulated in properly executed instances. We want all “iconic” designs confirmed progress like this. You may study extra concerning the Cartier Santos-Dumont assortment on cartier.com.
