Introducing: H. Moser & Cie. Partners With Alpine Motorsports For Two Special New Streamliners
What We Know
H. Moser & Cie., a brand known for the unexpected, just launched a pair of watches ahead of the Barcelona Formula 1 Grand Prix with its sponsored team Alpine Motorsports: the Streamliner Alpine Drivers Edition, a skeletonized mechanical chronograph, and the Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition, a — get ready for this — smartwatch.
A Moser smartwatch?! Even from a brand that makes watches out of literal cheese, that’s shocking. However, the brand provides a very specific reasoning behind this launch that I find quite interesting and makes this partnership between a watch brand and a Formula 1 team unique in the space, as most partnerships tend to focus on new colorways, dial designs, and caseback engravings.
So, let’s start with the more conventional of the two: the Streamliner Alpine Drivers Edition. While Moser is no stranger to using Agenhor movements in its chronographs, the Drivers Edition watch features a new skeletonized dial that reveals the unusual architecture of the Agengraphe-based HMC 700 movement and the self-winding rotor that typically sits hidden underneath the dial.
The visual cues of this new dial design are strongly tied to the brand’s relationship with Alpine — the skeletonized rotor echoes the design of the Alpine A110 wheel rim, while v-shaped bridges are meant to pay homage to triangulated suspensions. On the back, the center bridge of the anthracite-finished AgenGraphe movement is crafted to resemble a driver’s helmet. Like all AgenGraphe-based Streamliner chronographs, the minutes and seconds counter are centralized to eliminate the need for subdials.
With a blue PVD-coated stainless steel case in a diameter of 42.3mm and height of 14.2mm, the Streamliner Alpine Drivers Edition is quite a presence on the wrist and will surely stand out trackside at any F1 Grand Prix.
Now, of course, we have to talk about the Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition. A Streamliner with a screen. From afar, it might look like many a mechanical Moser — the distinctive shape of the steel Streamliner case, small Funky Blue fumé dial at 12 o’clock, and bright blue rubber strap are very similar traits to the Alpine Streamliner Cylindrical Tourbillon released last year. But that’s as far as resemblance goes. Instead of an intricately skeletonized movement with a giant tourbillon, the rest of the dial for this Alpine Mechanics Edition is all black.
Until you take the watch out of standby mode, when a screen lights up to reveal its hidden digital complications — a GMT function, split seconds chronograph, perpetual calendar, and a “F1 Mode” with countdown functionality and notifications for team alerts. Moser has certainly never produced a smartwatch before, and so it partners with Sequent for this hybrid analogue-digital caliber with a “power reserve” of 12 months for the time indication and “6 Grands Prix” worth of power for the digital display when continuously lit. You’ll need to charge this watch using the included charging cable.
The duo of watches, which the brand says is the first in a long series of projects in the year-old partnership, is sold together in a set of 200 pieces, priced at $70,000 for the set. The connected model will also be available for purchase to collectors who already own the Alpine-themed Streamliner Tourbillon, and will be produced in a limited run of just 500 pieces.
What We Think
News of this pair of watches certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to hit my desk this week, but count me sufficiently intrigued. I think the Streamliner Alpine Drivers Edition looks great, with the open dial concept a nice touch to take full advantage of the fact that the rotor is on the dial side. There are plenty of touches that lean into the industrial-automotive theme, but I’m very glad that Moser hasn’t fallen into the trap of taking things too far in its styling. Yes, the design is aggressive and exciting, but everything remains abstract enough for the design to be successful without an automotive impetus.
Now, the model most people will be talking about is the connected digital Streamliner. After all, most luxury-branded smartwatches are the models most shunned by the haute horology collecting community, so why would this be any different? There definitely is room for a bit of nuance, if only based on the fact that the watch is sold in a set with a very horologically impressive counterpart and that there will be very few made, which to me signifies that this digital solution isn’t meant to just be a cheaper watch to boost the brand’s short-term profits. So, to me, the desire for Moser to make a watch that is more practical for racing teams does make sense. And of course, given the name and inevitably lower cost of production, I have a hunch that at this week’s Spanish Grand Prix, we might see these on the wrists of many a team member. It would be a good strategy for the brand to get this Streamliner silhouette onto more wrists and seen by more of the race-viewing public.
I had never heard of Sequent until I learned about this new Moser watch, so I did a quick search. The brand mainly produces a line of analogue smartwatches powered by a self-winding rotor/turbine system. Moser doesn’t use this system, however. When I reached out, they informed me that the Streamliner utilized a new development from Sequent (as evident in the new screen-based functionality), but with manual charging. While a “self-winding” smartwatch would have been a really interesting concept for Moser to implement, I imagine the screen and connectivity functionality may draw too much power for a self-charging system to replenish properly. However, this is purely speculative on my part.
The other part we don’t yet know is what the interface is like for the ana-digi Streamliner, but rest assured that we will be hands-on with these new models over the weekend and plan to have more coverage for early next week. If you have specific questions, please feel free to drop them in the comments.
Moser’s implementation of a ana-digi smartwatch in a haute horology design language is certainly a big shift from the sub-one-thousand-dollar watches offered on Sequent’s site, but after the bygone era of the luxury smartwatch experiments like the TAG Connected or the Hublot Big Bang E, it was only a matter of time before someone else gave it a try.
The Basics
Brand: H. Moser & Cie.
Model: Streamliner Alpine Drivers & Mechanics Editions
Reference Number:
Diameter: 42.3mm (Drivers Edition); 42.6mm (Mechanics Edition)
Thickness: 14.2mm (Drivers Edition); 14.4mm (Mechanics Edition)
Case Material: Stainless steel
Dial Color: Skeletonized dial (Drivers Edition); Black + Blue Fumé (Mechanics Edition)
Indexes: Applied
Lume: Globolight (Drivers Edition); Super-LumiNova (Mechanics Edition)
Water Resistance: 12 ATM
Strap/Bracelet: Integrated rubber strap with steel pin buckle
The Movement (Driver’s Edition Chronograph)
Caliber: HMC 700 developed with Agenhor
Functions: Hours, minutes, seconds, chronograph
Diameter: 34.4mm
Thickness: 7.3mm
Power Reserve: 72 hours
Winding: Automatic
Frequency: 21,600 VpH
Jewels: 55
Chronometer Certified: No
Pricing & Availability
Price: $70,000 for the set
Availability: Now
Limited Edition: Yes, set of 200 pieces. Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition is limited to 500 separate pieces.
For more, click here.
Hodinkee