With such an epic origin story and beautiful timepieces, I always felt Zenith was underrated and had it in the back of my mind to eventually add an El Primero to the collection.
Not long after, Zenith would be using the famous calibre in its own watches once more. By 1988, Rolex was using the El Primero in its Daytona. This act of corporate defiance not only saved a watchmaking legacy, but it also saved Zenith as a business, allowing it to re-emerge from the ashes of the Quartz Crisis as the world’s premier manufacturer of automatic chronographs. Under the cover of night, he carried 150 presses responsible for manufacturing Zenith’s legendary El Primero movement (along with cams, special tools, and operating plans) up 52 steps to a workshop attic, concealing everything behind a wall like a time-capsule to be discovered in the distant future. A workshop employee by the name of Charles Vermot was having none of that. In a desperate attempt to stay afloat, Zenith’s top brass ordered its workshops to cease manufacturing all mechanical calibers and to scrap the machinery related to their production in order to focus on quartz watches. Zenith, like many of its Swiss counterparts in the mid 1970s, was struggling for survival as cheap and accurate quartz timepieces from Japan began flooding the market.
Take for example, Gerald Genta’s ground-breaking designs, credited for rescuing AP during the Quartz Crisis or Seiko’s meteoric rise during the 1960s from scoffed-at outsider to dominant force at the Swiss Chronometer trials and who can forget Omega’s famous exploits on the moon? (Omega sure won’t let you.) But my favorite origin story of all time is the story of how a simple watchmaker working at Zenith’s workshop #4 in Le Locle, Switzerland, saved a horological legacy, and the Zenith Chronomaster Revival Shadow is all about that story. There are few watch brands out there who can tell a truly compelling origin story.
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