BASELWORLD 2017:

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines: Chopard Rolls Out its Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition (Updated with Live Photos)


As it has since 1988, when it partnered with the world-famous Mille Miglia classic car rally as official timekeeper, Chopard is launching a special limited-edition Mille Miglia watch with distinctive automobile-inspired details. Here’s the scoop on the Chopard Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition, launched during Baselworld.

Chopard Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition - soldier
The Chopard Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition

This year’s watch — limited to 1,000 pieces, is notable for its engine-turned dial finish, chronograph counters inspired by vintage car dashboards, chrono pushers influenced by car engines, and large, fluted crown resembling a fuel cap. Like all Mille Miglia special editions since 2015, when the collection was reinvented by Chopard as Mille Miglia GTS (Gran Turismo Sport), it contains a COSC-certified chronometer movement and bears vintage style elements drawn from a specific automotive era, namely that of the cars that competed in the famous rally — which Enzo Ferrari once called “the world’s most beautiful race” — between 1940 and 1957.

Chopard Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition - side
The tachymeter scale bezel insert is in aluminum; the crown resembles a fuel cap.

 The steel case is 44 mm in diameter, 13.79 mm thick, and water-resistant to 100 meters. In addition to the aforementioned automotive details on the pushers, crown, and dial, the watch features a tachymeter bezel with an aluminum insert — the tachymeter scale being a useful indication for rally car drivers in measuring their average speed at a glance, and a detail also popular even with non-racecar-driving chronograph fans. This silver-toned dial — its traditional engine-turned motif composed of tiny overlapping circles and evoking the look of a classic car dashboard — hosts broad, baton-type hour and minute hands and applied hour-markers treated with Super-LumiNova. The font on the galvanic-treated, snailed counters brings to mind those on dashboard instruments of the golden age of racing. Bright red accents — the Mille Milgia logo, the central sweep-seconds hand, and the chronograph hand — contrast appealingly with the dial.

 

Chopard Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition - back
The caseback features an engraved checkered flag.

Every rally car — and every watch — needs a good engine, and the one inside the Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition is a chronometer-certified, self-winding mechanical movement with a 28,800-vph balance frequency, 25 jewels, and a 48-hour power reserve. This high-performance mechanism is secured behind a solid steel caseback, fastened by eight screws and engraved with a rendering of the famous checkered flag that is waved when a car crosses the finishing line, along with the arrow-shaped Mille Miglia logo and the inscription “Mille Miglia 1927-2017” and the watch’s limited edition number.

The case’s short, streamlined lugs integrate snugly with the black rubber strap, which, in a final stylistic nod to classic car racing, is enhanced with a 1960s Dunlop racing tire-tread motif. The watch, which will be priced at $6,840, is secured to the wrist by a steel folding clasp.

Scroll down to see live pictures from the Mille Miglia watches taken at Baselworld 2017.

Chopard Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition, dial
Chopard Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition Chopard Mille Miglia 2017 Race Edition, closeup

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