Moser Partners With Alpine Motorsports F1 For Two New Streamliners (And One Of Them’s A Smartwatch)

Over the years, Moser has produced a whole range of sophisticated, fascinating simple watches and complications, from unusual and exotic perpetual calendars like the Streamliner Perpetual and the Endeavour Perpetual, to chronographs powered by one of the most advanced chronograph calibers ever designed, to beautifully considered collaborations, and more. Moser has just announced what is a first for the company – actually, two firsts. One is a new collaboration – this time, it’s not with another watch brand. Instead, Moser has collaborated with the Alpine F1 team, which is a new name for the Renault F1 team, which is in turn just one of the names that the team has had since it began as the Toleman F1 team in 1981. Alpine for those of us not conversant with recent developments in F1 nomenclature, is a sub-brand of luxury cars from Renault, which has owned the marque since 1971.

The other, is that Moser has for the first time in its history, produced a smartwatch. This is actually another collaboration as well; the watch was produced to Moser’s specifications by a company called Sequent, whose signature technical invention is an internal, rotor-actuated generator powering a quartz timing package.

The two watches are the mechanical Streamliner Alpine Driver’s Edition, which is a mechanical chronograph powered by the famous Agengraphe chronograph caliber, and the Streamliner Alpine Mechanic’s Edition, which is a smartwatch with functionality designed around the needs of an F1 team’s pit crew.

The Driver’s Edition is a watch whose basic design and operation will be understood by anyone familiar with the Streamliner Flyback Chronograph. The cushion shaped Streamliner case houses the Moser caliber HMC 902, which is a variation of the Agengraphe chronograph movement created by Jean-Marc Wiederrecht. The HMC 902 is a flyback chronograph with a unique type of lateral clutch (which relies on friction rather than the meshing of gear teeth – you can think of it as a lateral-design version of a vertical clutch, which also relies on friction engagement) and there is a safety system to keep the chronograph clutch engaged in case the watch gets a shock. The HMC 902 is selfwinding, with the rotor on the dial side of the movement (MING by contrast uses a hand-wound version of the Agengraphe) and the movement uses a system of snail cams for the reset to zero mechanism.

The Alpine Driver’s Edition is 42.3mm x 14.2mm, in a steel case with a blue PVD treatment, and the Agengraphe caliber adapted for the watch is designated HMC 7000. The movement is openworked, with truss-shaped bridges on the front meant to echo the design of F1 car suspensions, and there is a more subtle nod to the sport on the back – the central bridge is shaped like a stylized driver’s helmet.

The Alpine Mechanic’s Edition is nearly identical in size to the Driver’s Edition – so close that you’d be hard pressed to notice, at 42.6mm x 14.4mm. It has been styled as much as possible to look like the twin of the Driver’s Edition (the evil twin, perhaps, depending on how you feel about quartz) but the case sports additional pushers in comparison to the Driver’s edition, including a large button marked “Sync” on the left side of the case.

The Mechanic’s Edition is a Bluetooth connected smartwatch, although you can’t really tell until you activate the smartwatch functions; until you do, only the analog display of the time is visible. Smartwatch functions include GMT with country selector, a 1/100/second chronograph, perpetual calendar, and “race mode” which displays on demand, upcoming races, a countdown to the races, and team alerts and messages specific to a particular racing team (Alpine races in Formula 1, but also in the World Endurance Championship and Alpine even has an e-sports racing team).

Although Sequent, Moser’s partner in designing and constructing the Mechanic’s edition, is best known for its automatic rotor-generator charging system, the Mechanic’s edition is powered by a conventional rechargeable power cell – this may be due to the need for a full power reserve when the watch is being used in connected/race mode. When race mode is off, the watch has a power reserve of one year in time only mode, and enough juice in the power cell for “six F1 races” according to Moser. This is probably a little elastic as F1 races are nominally around two hours, but can go on much longer if the safety car is out for an extended period of time (the record was set in 2011, at the Canadian Grand Prix, when severe rain led to a race that ran a total of four hours, four minutes, and 39 seconds).

The watches are being made available as a set of 200 pieces, priced at $70,000, and the connected model can also be purchased as a standalone watch, which will be offered to owners of the Alpine Streamliner Tourbillon, in a limited edition of 500 pieces.

The idea of a brand known for high end luxury mechanical timepieces, producing a connected watch, might be thought to be to some degree problematic, but I think in this instance, it makes a great deal of sense; this is a very specific watch made for a very specific partnership, and its functionality reflects that – it’s not an example of a mechanical watch brand deciding that it needs to compete with, say, the Apple Watch or some other smartwatch (we did actually see a spate of attempts from various brands to produce connected watches with hybrid movements in the mid-2000s, which were pretty much universally flops). A better example of a similar approach might be the various Omega X-33 models, which are also designed for a specific mission in a specific environment (and which also use hybrid analog-digital displays). The notion that a quartz or connected watch, somehow invalidates a brand’s activities in mechanical horology, is partly due to the notion that our sense of identity as watch enthusiasts is predicated partly on the rejection of quartz ideologically, but of course, Grand Seiko and Citizen (for instance) both make wonderful mechanical and high precision quartz watches, which the market and the enthusiast community by and large happily accept. And it’s not as if the X-33 somehow invalidates the heritage of the Speedmaster.

Let’s say that the watch industry was starting to show signs of definite recovery from the Quartz Crisis by 1985 – a little arbitrary but that’s the year that the IWC Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar Chronograph came out. It has now been forty years, and I think at this point we don’t need to view a smartwatch from a high horology watchmaker as some sort of bizarre aberration. Instead, it’s just another idiom to explore in the larger world of wristwatch engineering and design, and as with mechanical watches, the question is less what you do than how well you do it.

The Moser Streamliner Alpine Driver’s Edition, ref. 6700-1200: case, 42.3mm x 14.2mm, in steel with blue PVD coating, water resistance 120 meters. Movement, Agengraphe-based caliber HMC 700, openworked self-winding “bullhead” style flyback chronograh, with dial side tungsten winding rotor, running at 21,600 vph in 55 jewels; power reserve, 72 hours. 34.4mm x 7.3mm. Column wheel controlled friction engaged lateral clutch. 

The Moser Streamliner Alpine Mechanic’s Edition, ref. 6D10-1200; case, steel, 42.6mm x 14.4mm with pushers at 2,3, and 4 o’clock and SYNC button at 9 o’clock for race mode. Sapphire crystal caseback with Moser emblem. “Funky Blue” fumé dial with Moser logo in transparent lacquer. Movement, caliber D10, developed with SEQUENT for Moser; BLE 5.3 (Bluetooth Low Energy) connected movement, 32.50mm x 33.90mm x 6.90mm, running at 32,768 Hz; accuracy, ±0.3 seconds per day. Analog time display with GMT with country selector, 1/100th/second chronograph, perpetual calendar, and race mode with alerts, countdown to start, and upcoming races.

Available as a set, limited to 200 pieces; price, $70,000. The 1916 Company is proud to be an authorized retailer for Moser; contact us for availability.