The Cartier Roadster is a breath of fresh air among round and rectangular watches. The watch is inspired by sports automobiles from the 1950s, hence its tonneau-shaped case that recalls the curves of vintage cars.
Check out our experts' review of Cartier Roadster watches for men and women.
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Transcript:
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Fresh from the showroom here at SwissWatchExpo, we are talking Roadsters this morning Blake.
Excellent and I'm Blake. I'm really looking forward to learning more about these watches. They look very unique, like nothing else we have in the store, and apparently there's a lot more about these that are really unique too.
Yeah we've got a wide variety of them - when I just typed in Roadster on the “search our collection” here on SwissWatchExpo.com, we have almost 60 of these. So they're definitely one of the bedrocks of the collection. Really successful watch for Cartier. For some reason that's unknown, they just out of the blue discontinued it a few years ago. We've still got plenty of them here on the secondary market as certified pre-owned. So many different combinations of dials - it's really a fascinating watch. What strikes you first when you see this watch?
First thing’s definitely the shape of the case, there's really nothing that’s shaped exactly like it you know.
Yes.
The basic shape, the way the lugs are.
The case shape on this is called tonneau, it means barrel in French. So it's the top and bottom are flat and the sides are curved just like a barrel. This is a shape that Cartier actually invented and came out with in 1906. So at the time, the early 20th century, almost all of the competitors’ watches to Cartier were round. Round was absolutely the craze at the time. Cartier considered himself - and this is Louis Cartier, he was the grandson of the founder but he was the absolute genius of the watch in jewelry world that made Cartier who they are now - he pretty much invented any shape that you can think of for a watch that's not round, came from Cartier. So you have the rectangular watch, and the tank, you have the oval, and the Benoit, you have the tonneau, the asymmetrical shapes he invented. He really considered himself to be making something that was a piece of jewelry that happened to tell time. Cartier's history going back to 1847, is that they were the “jeweler to kings and the king of jewelers,” King Edward said. They really have an incredible attention to detail. It really is a different approach to watchmaking from other watch companies because of the way they view themselves as stylish, sophisticated, very...I want to say just different; where other watch companies are really focused on the sporting aspect of a watch, Cartier really is focused on the style of it.
Actually.
They do a lot of fascinating movements. The Roadster came out in 2001, this was right when Cartier was completing the purchase of Jaeger Lecoulture and Vacheron Constantin. They had also just bought Panerai. So they really were emphasizing the quality of the movements, they were doubling down on movements but at the same time holding on to that style and sophistication they were known for. So when this watch came out in 2001, (it was) definitely caused earthquakes in the watch world. It was as you said, not like anything else. The Roadster is a convertible car, this watch is called Roadster because it's a convertible watch. On the back it has a titanium bar that you can just pull down and click the strap off and click a different color on or click the bracelet on, the bracelet works the same way. So you can have a lot of fun with your watch and have different colors and you'd be amazed how different a watch looks just by changing the bracelet. Here in the front we have - these two are the same watch with a white strap with stitching versus the steel bracelet, but to look at them it's so strikingly different just by changing the strap.
It can do it all.
Yeah so the first Roadster I had was the chronograph, the extra-large - this one - and I kept it mostly on a black nylon strap, it was kind of my motorcycling watch. Then, a few years later I switched it to the steel bracelet and kind of never went back. It's a great watch, this is about a 43 millimeter case. It's an automatic winding mechanical movement. You can see it's got the Cartier blued steel shape, sword-shaped hands but this time with loom in the middle; and the Cartier standard silver dial with Roman numerals, the three sub dials - really beautiful.
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