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TIMELESS
FINNIES THE JEWELLER
White-tiled floors you could eat your dinner off. Studied handcraftsmanship practised alongside precision robotics. Luxurious marvels of engineering coming off the production line. All accompanied by an invigorating whiff of warm oil. Bentley’s historic, squeaky-clean manufacturing plant in Crewe is always a feast for the senses.
Only we’re not in Crewe at all. We’re 740 miles south-east, at Breitling’s shiny Chronométrie watch factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland – a place that might possibly rank as the world’s most high-end industrial estate, with Cartier, Tissot, Bell & Ross and Chanel all down the road.
I’m here to observe Bentley’s watchmaking partner (of 14 years) doing what few others could hope to achieve: make its own precision mechanical movements entirely autonomously.
But to rewind and explain a few things first. We’re making this three-day, 2,000- mile round-trip in a Bentley – the stonking Continental GTC V8 S, in fact – starting at Edinburgh’s Bentley dealership, with a stop at Finnie’s in Aberdeen to collect our engines for the wrist: a Breitling-for-Bentley titanium-cased GMT Lightbody with the B04 GMT in-house-movement, its voluptuous case knurled with Bentley’s famous cross-hatched grille texture.
Chronographs duly started with that satisfying ‘click’, it’s a multi-péage A-road whoosh through France before we finally hit the twisty roads out of Besançon, towards the heights of the Jura. Heading for our first overnight stay on Lac Neuchâtel, on the other side of the crumpled landscape, we really start to test the V8 S’s sprightly, torquey agility about the winding tarmac. Despite the car’s heft, it feels as precise as one of Breitling’s chronometers.
It’s all too easy to become caught-up in the capabilities denoted by that ‘S’. The really impressive ability of this car is what binds every Bentley that leaves Crewe, and what allows the ‘whoosh’ through France to be barely noticeable, despite the relentlessly featureless miles. Ensconced in a hushed leather bubble, we are
conveyed cross-continent on a tidal wave of refinement. The miles tumble away, and we are delivered to Switzerland with our minds still keen for more. In any other car, you’d arrive at Neuchâtel’s Hotel Beau-Rivage feeling exhausted and ready for bed. In the Bentley, you may as well have popped to the shops and back.
To experience the Swiss Jura’s sweeping, switchback roads and lush, panoramic slopes with Bentley’s 4.0-litre V8 beast growling in front is pure exhilaration. Where there are mountains involved, there are always roads worth driving. Spring has just sprung, and with the roof stowed, our senses are overwhelmed by the distant burble of melted snow and the heady zest of pine sap. No doubt every bystander’s own senses are stirred by the sight and sound of the car’s pillarbox-red paint scheme, muscular stance and snarly exhaust note, as we pass through strangely municipal Swiss villages and contrastingly lush landscapes of clanking cowbells and misty evergreen.
Our destination, La Chaux-de-Fonds, is perched all the way up in the Jura mountains, a stone’s throw from the French border. Fondly known as the cradle of Swiss watchmaking, it’s the highest city in Europe, as well as one of the most remote.
We are here to witness how Breitling has switched from using tried-and-trusted chronographs sourced from Swatch Group to its own newfangled ‘B01’ design – a move that takes vast technical know-how, investment in the tens of millions, and a truckload of guts.
Butboy,hasitbeenworththeeffort.Fromthebatteriesoffive-axisCNCmilling machines, their heat-exchange units keeping the factory warm in the bleak Swiss winter, to the sushi-bar assembly line, delivering movements and pre-assembled parts to watchmakers via a magazine system pioneered by a German blood- analysis lab, the ‘Swiss lever’ watch – still based on centuries-old mechanical principles – has never been manufactured in such a cutting-edge manner.
ABOVE: the author at the wheel (Breitling for Bentley watch criminally obscured), clearly enjoying the unbridled joy of an open-top Continental GTC on the continental open road
RIGHT: the 49mm- diameter, titanium-cased Breitling for Bentley GMT Light Body B04 (£10,500), kitted out with the watch atelier’s proprietary chronograph movement, fitted with a second-time-zone module, itself indicated by the big red hours hand
FAR RIGHT: precision mechanical movements are made entirely autonomously at Breitling’s ‘Chronometrie’ watch factory in
La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
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