It seems like only yesterday… New Ferraris were in such demand that it was possible to make six-figure money in some markets merely by taking delivery of a new F430 or F599 and selling it later that day. Meanwhile, that unspeakably crass reanimated Italian psuedo-luxury watch brand, Panerai, had waiting lists chock-full of suckers waiting to pay five, ten, or fifteen grand for a watch with the same amount of technology and craftsmanship as an $899 ORIS.
Three or so years ago, Ferrari ditched staid old Girard-Perregaux for sexy new Panerai. The not-so-special editions flowed like sweet nouveau glacial milk and the “punters” lined up in droves. This was the marriage of true brands, to which no man may admit an unprofitable impediment.
As of today, the party’s officially over. Welcome… to the bargain bin.
I’m a bit of a watch guy and I have a few IWCs and Omegas sitting around the house, so I subscribe to something called JomaDeals. Every morning I wake up and am presented with another UNBEATABLE WATCH DEAL OMG. Normally it’s second-level trash like Baume&Mercier, Jacob&Co, or Invicta. Once they had a pretty nice IWC — the ridiculous but sexy Ingenieur Climate Action.
Today, they had the Ferrari/Panny tie-in: the Panerai Ferrari Granturismo FER001 “Limited Edition”. Retail price: a ridiculous, but hitherto non-negotiable, $7,100. Yours today for $2,900. If you’d rather deal with Amazon, they have it for $3,550. Half. Freaking. Price.
Does this mean that the boom times are really, really over? Have the first-generation stockbrokers and general practicioners come to their senses? Or was this simply a brand bridge too far? My opinion: The lipstick on the pig has finally worn off.
I’m both a watch and a car guy, but never understood watch/car joint marketing efforts. Bentley/Breitling, Porsche Design/IWC/etc., Ferrari/IWC/Panerai, Aston Martin/JLC, Bugatti/Parmigiani, etc. etc. Don’t get me started an AP’s “Limited Edition of the month club” where they slap another dial on the Royal Oak for every F1 driver or yacht racing team and triple the price. To me, a car is a car, and a watch is a watch and never the twain shall meet.
Twotone
exactly.
Poseurs. Give me the $15k price of the watch and I’ll put together a Mustang that will whoop a Ferrari and its pretty-boy driver six ways to Sunday, then show him how much slower he was on my Casio Ironman.
Cool story, bro!
As a Panerai, it is kind of a deal.
But since I don’t own a Ferrari, you wouldn’t catch me dead with this watch even if it were the last watch on Earth.
Even if you owned a Ferrari, it would still be tacky to wear a Ferrari watch.
I’ve got a 75-year-old family heirloom Girard watch…staid, but timeless and classy.
The great thing about a good watch–it only has to be bought once every 100+ years. Glad I’m not the one footing the bill to keep up with the Joneses. Thanks, great grandpa!
I must admit automotive cross-branding can work, if the brands complement each other. I’m thinking Coach/Lexus, LL Bean/Subaru, Orvis/Jeep for attire, nevermind the audio tie-ups of B&W, Mark Levinson, Lexicon (except the epic fail of Subaru + McIntosh).
I fail to see how an automotive brand benefits from such a tie-up. Unlike the dozen or so luxury car companies, there are hundreds of luxury watch brands, and it’s in their interest to tie themselves to a well known automobile manufacturer to cut through the advertising noise. The benefit seems to go disproportionally to the watch company.
Watches are just like jewlery now. Pretty to look at, but one of the first things to go when times are tough. I used to wear a watch, but now I just look at my cell phone, and it’s always accurate. My Movado just sits in a drawer gathering dust.
This is also true. Even though I tend to only own one watch at a time, I am definitely aware that they are no longer necessary and their true function is merely “fancy bracelet”. This is also why I have never gone out of my way to get too nice a watch. basically you end up never wearing it because you worry whether it will be stolen/lost/broken.
As a former regional airline pilot, I broke and scuffed up so many goddamn watches going through TSA at different airports that I gave up on them and use my cell phone to tell the time. Besides, my watches were like my pens – disposable cheap Walmart specials.
BTW, where ya been JB? It seems like it’s been awhile since I read one of your articles.
I’m here a minimum of four times a week, but I’ve been doing more short pieces lately, mainly because I have been absolutely cramped for time working a day job and dealing with my toddler son.
Well JB, I sure appreciate you taking the time to write for TTAC. It’s always interesting.
My favorite is Lamborghini Acer.
I wonder if they sell an Audi Gateway and a SEAT eMachines version…
The funny thing about watches, their main purpose (to tell time) is so overlooked as they are nothing but fancy jewelry now. My wife has one so called time keeping device her mother got her, it cost 20-30X what my cheap-o Casio did. However my watch has a 10 year battery, its waterproof to a depth were light doesn’t even reach, a calendar that goes into 2030 something, it even has DST setting and time zone mode for traveling, thus its NEVER wrong. The wife’s fancy watch-like arm band thing doesn’t even know which months have 30 versus 31 days thus its always wrong.
I can remember from the early 1970s my dad wearing a big ass watch with 3 miniature dials in addition to the large dial, plus an additional month and day display. All mechanical, nothing electronic. I thought something like that would be so cool, so when I was in first or second grade, he let me wear one of his older watches like that one for a while. I just HAD to show it off to my friends on the playground and was convinced that I was king shit for wearing it. I broke it, of course – what did my dad and I expect? Oh well, live and learn.
But it’s an automatic? Please tell me it’s at least an SMG or DCT..
My brother inherited the only timepiece I would give a damn about – our grandfather’s gold Southern Railway pocket watch. It was regularly tuned up by the company through to his retirement. I think it would take a lot of work to get it in shape again, but, truly, that is now even less the point than it is for people who have the sort of horological jewelry mentioned here.
My keepsake is transportation related – a pair of sterling silver cufflinks in the shape of a section of track rails and roadbed. If only I didn’t wear polo shirts most of the time.
a Mustang that will whoop a Ferrari and its pretty-boy driver six ways to Sunday, then show him how much slower he was on my Casio Ironman.
I’m not sure I understand everyone’s fascination with cheap crap.
Cheap, RELIABLE, dependable crap is fascinating.
I’m not sure I understand everyone’s fascination with cheap crap.
Designing something with few price constraints is easier than meeting performance criteria at a lower price point. When the Tata Nano was announced, that year at the NAIAS I asked all the designers that I spoke to if they’d like the challenge of building a cheap people’s car and to a person they all said that designing something like the Nano is much more of a design and engineering challenge than drawing just another 600HP mid-engined supercar.
There’s a word that’s used to describe very well designed scientific experiments: elegant. I’m looking for elegance in design no matter the price point. I love visiting the Henry Ford Museum (no, I will not use their stupid rebranding) because 19th century technology is just as impressive in its own right as the iPhone in your pocket – and that iPhone wouldn’t exist were it not for the great achievements creating technologies we now regard as obsolete.
Today’s technology carries with it a lot of overhead. That switch you press or knob you turn today most likely operates some kind of logic circuit. I worry about the next generation of inventor and tinkerers because almost everything uses high tech. When I was a kid, you could actually open up a radio and with a little bit of technical instruction you could identify the various components. All those old Fender and other 50s and 60s vintage amps can be modded up the wazoo because the technology is transparent.
Today, with large scale integrated circuits you can have a complete device on a single chip, so it’s not like you can identify the variable capacitor tuner in an old radio. Cars too are very high tech today. So are appliances. It seems to me that the only thing that a kid could learn how to fix today would be a lawnmower.
Asimov famously said that to a primitive society high technology is indistinguishable from magic (and some wag coined a corollary that substituted weapon for magic). I have my father’s desk phone that he used in his veterinary clinic back in the 1950s. It turns out to have been made in 1938. It has a sticky dial that needs some cleaning an lubrication, and some kind of transient short in the headset cable, but other than that it’s a 72 year old phone that works. I can show you the functional parts and probably even fix them myself. I just bought a new phone, a Samsung Freeform II. It cost me $50 at MetroPCS. It can tell me where I am, how to get there, receive messages that are alerted with Peaches En Regalia, and with a 4gig tiny little micro SD card I can walk around with much of my music library – and listen via a bluetooth device so there isn’t any wire holding me down. That old Western Electric model 302 phone will still be working (if they still have POTS) in 2082, you can literally kill someone with the heavy Bakelite handset. Does anyone think that my new Samsung phone will be working in 10 years, let alone 70? Without a protective case, the first time it hits a hard floor, it’s gone.
For someone who has received telegrams in my life, the tech today is absolutely headshakingly amazing. It’s also so advanced that I think it may ironically create a barrier to kids learning about technology.
Ronnie,
Great comment, thanks. A couple of quick comments of my own:
1. Everything is designed for obsolescence now. Mean time between failures/overhauls is almost an afterthought, since price points have to be met with increasingly complex technology–cars, phones, you name it.
2. Technological literacy has topped out and seems to be on the downhill now. My own observation–most of the heaviest tech users are under 25 years old and have the most toys, but have little or no understanding of how they work, how to troubleshoot, or even how to “think like a programmer.” I’m not saying those of us a little older (I’m 32) are tech geeks, but many of us grew up using DOS, Win 3.1, and the earliest internet browsers. We didn’t have all of this tech from a young age, and never had the chance to take it for granted. Similarly, I have never touched a carburetor in my life (but yes, I plan to!).
Funny enough, limited edition Panarais (meaning runs of 25) auction off in the high tens of thousands, making them an appreciable asset. Watch makers dump unsuccessful or overproduced models into the grey market to make them disappear in a hurry. Unsuccessful is the nicest descriptive one can assign to this tasteless watch. BTW, there was a massive dump of overproduced and overpriced watches into the grey market after the crash of 2008.
In any case, these 44mm plus watches are way too large for most people. I cringe whenever i see wrist shots in watch forums – the majority of owners look like they’ve strapped a tuna can to their wrist. Might as well wear a clock around your neck. That’s class.
Flava Flaaaaav….Yeah Boy!!!!
I love the look of J-L Reversos, but I’d only buy one if I already had everything else I could literally ever want. There’s just so many better uses for that kind of money than a watch.
Watches may have outlived their usefulness, as someone said earlier just look at your cellphone for the time.
Ridiculous. A fine timepiece is a one of the very few ways men can display their individuality.
(Shoes, ties, watches and cars are about it for us.)
Interest in the Ferrari Panerai watch withered weeks from launch years ago.
The best marriage of watch and cars are the Mille Miglia collection from Chopard, especially the GTXL 44mm with the Dunlop tire track strap.
My understanding is that Ferrari builds their own engines, but Panerai buys their movements. Amirite?
Many watchmakers use base ETA movements and then modify them. The dig at Oris is based on the fact that they won’t even modify the base ETA movement, but they’ll mark up their product regardless. The trend is swinging back to more in house movements though as it’s necessary for watch houses to distinguish their brands.
Panarai does both: http://www.paneristi.com/reference/vendome/mvmt/index.html