Yahoo Autos This Updated Seventies Watch Looks More Modern Than Anything New
It’s funny how the future changes. In the Fifties, space-age optimism produced bewinged Cadillacs, not only styled like they just might lift off the pavement but also pointing to a time when that seemed certain. Those swoopy land yachts gave way to a stark, organized vision of the future, body lines running square and efficient like circuitry. One silhouette overtook the other, and in hindsight, both look dated.
This story originally appeared in Volume 20 of Road & Track.
But some designs, by a mix of intuition and magic, look forever like the future. For example, the Girard-Perregaux Casquette 2.0. As the name implies, this is the second major iteration of the watch GP first released in 1976. The Casquette’s basic form still points forward. It’s an angular coffin perched across the wrist with a sideways digital readout that’s visible while your hand grips a steering wheel.
Timeless design or not, in the half century between the first and second iterations of the Casquette, materials science pressed on. Now ceramics—hypoallergenic, featherweight, effectively scratch-proof—sit on the cutting edge of watchmaking.
For version 2.0, GP reimagines the Casquette in matte-black ceramic for both the watch’s signature case and the links of its rubber-lined bracelet. The bright polished accents, like the buttons and caseback, are titanium. These lightweight materials confer a disconnect between the Casquette’s chunky visual presence and its airy feel. A Saint Laurent version, pictured here, adds PVD-coated-titanium details.
The quartz movement powers a display lit by LED tubes, rather than your typical flat-panel LCD readout, lending the Casquette a Terminator’s-eyeball glow.
Can the Casquette’s design endure another 50 years for version 3.0? Surely. It’ll be back.
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