Singer Vehicle Design employees are fetishists. They make their living treating every little knick-knack on a Porsche 911 like an heirloom quality piece fit for royalty. It’s easy to see how that zeitgeist transferred over to the world of high-end watches, beginning with the $40k Singer Reimagined Singer Track 1. And now they’re unleashing the Singer Reimagined Flytrack Chronograph, a watch “designed with the main purpose of reimagining, once again, the chronograph.” Wait. Why?
“It is a celebration of the practicality of a chronograph combined with a specific calibrated scale.” Say what? Chronographs are only slightly more useful than a tourbillon. And aren’t practicality and specificity practically opposites? Let’s break it down . . .
First off, the bezel is not a bezel. Under the crystal, that solo triangle on the roulette wheel does the job of an hour hand. Presumably everybody but me loves these centerless means of telling time. However the minute and seconds hand are of conventional design.
About that second hand – it flies. I lose track of the kinds of chronometers, but this is one of them. It dispenses with the subdials, which is apparently the whole point of a chronometer below a certain price point. This is done by only timing up to a minute.
“According to Marco Borraccino, founder and designer of Singer, we mostly use our chronographs for the first 60 seconds.” True for me! I tend to forget the chronograph is running after that, or what I was even timing.
Every stopwatch I’ve ever used – or heard of – operates by pushing the button to start it. Not here! The seconds hand is on seconds hand duty until the pusher is depressed. That makes it fly in an abusive acceleration/stop race to park itself at 12 o’clock. It will stay there as long as that pusher is held down. I hope that is a comfortable pusher to lean against while waiting there like the Dutch Boy for the timed thing to be ready.
On the plus side, the Singer Reimagined Flytrack Chronograph can be used as the speediest second hand hacking around. The bulk of time spent setting my watches back for the end of Daylight Saving Time was waiting for the second hand to hit the high spot before pulling the crown.
But wait, there’s more! In honor of Amazon and/or the Autobot leader, there is a Flyback Prime edition of ten pieces coming out first. They are titanium case instead of steel. Ten each, that is, for three variations. Thirty pieces, but each gets to be serialized 1-10, or maybe 0-9.
There’s no typical engraved number on the back because Singer knows ostentation. Would you believe there is a little circular recess drilled into the corner of the case? Get this, there are little golden raised numbers to insert for the serialization, right on the front. Yes, hand-inserted!
I’m not sure if they are secure it with hot glue or a more durable fastening process like riveting or a nut on the back. I also don’t know if they are just gold colored or literally Au gold. The latter wouldn’t surprise me one bit.
Short of having the number glow like the Mercedes Illuminated Star, could this be more unsubtle? They could shadow the whole dial with a giant digit and it might be stealthier. Permanent, contrasting color, inlaid and three dimensional. Positioned right there to be visible anytime it peeks out from under a sleeve. That’s attention to attention right there.
So what are these three sub-editions? “So we have a Tachymeter (for speed), a Pulsometer (for a pulse), and a Telemeter (for distance) edition.” TTAW may sound like a broken record, but who is using any of these in the modern age?
Anyway, the variations take the form of color for dial background and printing, rehaut, and that hour thing, too. The normal hands stay orange. Bands vary, but the leather ones will have orange stitching.
The speed tachymeter is all silver and black except for that orange hour triangle. Black leather band with racy holes. I mean “rally perforations.”
The Pulsometer dispenses with black because of negative associations with that color and cardiac function (take that, Joan Jett!). So all is gold and brown. Heart of gold, much better! It’s the perfect complication for all those nurses partial to $29k watches.
Back to black for the new old trick of the telemetry sub-edition with greenish accents such as the scale printing and the stitching on the black fabric band.
Remember how to count the gap between seeing lightning and hearing thunder and determine how far away it struck? I never could. The scale here will do it for you. Hope you like the answer in clicks, as in kilometers. Supposedly this can work with other faraway explosions and strikes too. Just keep that pusher down until you see something, then release!
The movement is pure complication. Making things accelerate and decelerate as quickly as possible is a violent process and I think this is supposed to be done without consuming enough energy to alter the regularly scheduled timekeeping. They know you want to see it, so exhibitionist case back!
And there you have it: the chronometer reimagined, just like all those Porsches that someone somewhere was complaining about.
Anyone wanting a Singer Reimagined Flytrack Chronograph can reserve the watch via the “commission request form.” Singer can’t take your seriously ’til they get a 50 percent deposit. There are only thirty watches on offer at $30k – some $10k less than its predecessor. Imagine that!