SIHH update – Cartier

One of the most remarkable news this year is the end of Collection Privee Cartier Paris. This remarkable collection of timelessly designed wristwatches will be replaced by the bigger and bolder Fine Watchmaking Collection. 

This year the special editions known as ‘Collection Privee Cartier Paris’ or CPCP, and known for the word ‘Paris’ on the dial, will seize to be produced. If you want more information about this collection than I can recommend the website Troisanneaux.com that is entirely dedicated to Cartier’s mechanical wristwatches.

Despite this fact, Cartier comes with a very strong line-up this year. Most models are based on the Tank Americain and the Santos 100 and are rather complicated. Here are my favourites 🙂

The new Santos 100 now features an beautiful skeletonised movement. The manual wind caliber 9611 MC was manufactured entirely by Cartier. Equipped with two barrels, the 9611 MC calibre has 72 hours of powe reserve, thus guaranteeing the long-term consistency of the mainspring and exceptional precision.

The movement has been shaped to take the function of the dial as well. In the way it’s skeletonised it shows the same roman numbers like shown on the new Santos 100 Tourbillon. The Santos 100 Skeleton is housed in an oversized palladium case.

Next is the Cartier Rotonde Central Chronograph. The movement features a chronograph, but not just a chronograph. The elapsed time is displayed in the centre of the dial. Calibre 9907 MC is produced, developed and prototyped exclusively in-house in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Timekeeping occurs on two levels: the lower level displays the hours and minutes using blued hands of which only the tips are visible. The upper level is dedicated to the chronograph function. In the centre, the slim blued seconds hand is the chronograph seconds hand, while the large counter in the form of an arc shows the elapsed time up to 30 minutes.

Last but not least, Cartier made another tourbillon that i absolutely love, the Tank Américaine Tourbillon Volant. Usually i’m not crazy about holes in a dial to show a part of the movement, even when it’s a complication like a tourbillon. But Cartier designed a dial with a lot of depth so the hole releaving the tourbillon somehow seems logical. The movement was already used in the Ballon Blue tourbillon that was released last year. Caliber 9452 MC has the Geneva Seal movement and is also used in the Santos 100 Tourbillon. This one-minute flying tourbillon reveals a C-shaped tourbillion carriage at six o’clock.