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Jul 27, 2023

The Ultra

By Cam Wolf This is an edition of the newsletter Box + Papers, Cam Wolf’s weekly deep dive into the world of watches. Sign up here. Attending Monterey Car Week is what I imagine Scrooge McDuck might

By Cam Wolf

This is an edition of the newsletter Box + Papers, Cam Wolf’s weekly deep dive into the world of watches. Sign up here.

Attending Monterey Car Week is what I imagine Scrooge McDuck might see after getting bonked on the head. There are doubles and triples of all the fanciest and most expensive stuff on the planet. It warps the most extraordinary experiences into common ones. Picture this awesome-ass image: While riding with the windshield down, the chilly winds of Big Sur whipping me straight in the face, in a rare 1938 Delahaye Type 135MS—picture a sexy Batmobile—with Leslie Kendall, curator at the Petersen Automotive Museum, there was another Delahaye just two cars in front of us. “People will see these two with each other and they'll say, ‘Oh, my God, they’re everywhere,” Kendall said. “Well, no.”

This was on the second leg of the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, a performance showcase at MCW—designed as an amuse bouche to Sunday’s Concours d’Elegance. The event gathers historical cars and puts them through the paces on a two-hour drive through the redwood-dense Big Sur. The route is littered with million-dollar vehicles stalled out on the side of the road. The ones driving on the other side are equally amazing: “This is a Chrysler Imperial convertible, one-of-a-kind, built for the president of Chrysler; Mercedes S; Rolls Royce, looks like a Phantom; Packard; Packard; Ferrari; Mercedes; Packard; Rolls Royce; Bentley with the Pininfarina body; Alfa [Romeo] TC; Ferrari; another Duesenberg; Cord 812; Alfa Romeo 6C; Maserati; Porsche, obviously; Bentley; Ferrari; Buggati 57 FC; Bentley; Bentley; Mercedes 300 SL…three of them!” Kendall said, documenting the line of cars whizzing by on the other side of Highway 1.

And although watches aren’t the focal point of the event, MCW manages to conjure horological sights you won’t see anywhere else. On Saturday, at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, where cars race the Laguna Seca track, nine-time Le Mans winner and Rolex ambassador Tom Kristensen arrived in the new Rolex Daytona “Le Mans,” sending the watch journalists on hand into a small tizzy. Then, just a few moments after, a collector who asked to remain anonymous strolled over to show Kristensen his watch: a freaking Rolex Daytona “Le Mans.” They Voltron’d them together. The limited-edition is undoubtedly the most hyped release of the year and one the Crown will put out very small quantities of. MCW is one of the few places you’ll see one, let alone two together. Don’t worry, I got you a picture:

Up close and personal with Kristensen's Daytona

MCW brings all types of watch business to the quaint little seaside region of Monterey. After recovering from the double Le Mans Daytona, I met up with Eric Wind, the founder of Wind Vintage, who was in town for the weekend on both business and pleasure. He met a guy who “pulled back his sleeve to show off a beautiful Rolex ‘Big Red’ Daytona reference 6263 and said, ‘Nice to meet you, Eric. You sold me this watch!’” A small scoop: Wind also showed me a new Rowing Blazers collaboration coming out with one of the big-name Swiss brands you’re certainly familiar with. The piece is a stunner.

I also bumped into Adam Golden, the owner of Menta Watches, at Friday’s Quail. He brought some gorgeous timepieces along for the ride, like a rare yellow-gold Rolex Datejust with an emerald-green bloodstone dial stamped with the Khanjar logo and made for the Sultan of Oman … just in case someone wanted to take home a nice souvenir. But he left more impressed with the buffet of watches. “The best part was that you could see such a vast diversity of watches, and much like the cars, value didn’t matter,” he said. “Was all about the passion for the car or watch that mattered.”

Ku's Rolex Daytona Rainbow

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Fourtane, the watch boutique and jeweler in town that just sold John Mayer his Rolex “Puzzle” Day-Date, becomes the red-hot center of the watch universe for a week. On Thursday, I entered the store to find mega-collector Eric Ku, the owner of online auction site Loupe This, holding court with a half-dozen watch enthusiasts standing around him. Ku was appropriately attired: double-wristing with a Rolex Rainbow Daytona on one wrist. “He comes, he talks for a day, and he always draws a crowd,” said Russell Kelly, Fourtane’s COO.

“This is the most important time of the year for us,” Kelly said of MCW. People start trickling in the weekend before the event actually kicks off and the swell of customers peaks on Saturday, according to Kelly. Folks wait all year to come by and pick up the orders they placed at the same event 12 months prior (the long waiting lists for desirable watches makes this quite convenient). Customers like to “mark the occasion with a new watch,” Kelly said. Over the span of the event, Fourtane moved some very high-profile watches: a solid-gold Rolex Submariner and GMT as well as a vintage platinum Day-Date with an onyx dial, among many other pieces.

Fourtané's vintage selection

The shared affection between car and watch people was at full tilt at MCW. Conveniently Jenson Button, a former Formula One champion, was on hand after driving a Porsche up from his home in Los Angeles to help explain the connection. The shared passion works on a mechanical level as well as a philosophical one. “Our whole life [as drivers] is around time,” Button said, “it's the most important thing for racing.” Jenson’s first nice watch was a steel Rolex Daytona and he’s since added several to his collection, including the everose gold model with a chocolate dial on his wrist when we chatted Saturday morning over the roar of engines tackling Laguna Seca’s famous corkscrew. “You see a lot of drivers now whose teams are sponsored by watch manufacturers. As soon as they leave the track, you see them wearing a Rolex,” according to the Rolex ambassador.

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F1 driver Jenson Button

While enjoying the spinach gnocchi at local French-Italian spot Casanova, I overheard a man excitedly telling his friends about a Rolex that his dealer had never seen before. He went on: the bracelet was highly unusual and the piece was Rolex’s first-ever quartz watches. I couldn’t help myself any longer so I leaned over to introduce myself and (politely) demand he show me the watch.

The Texan

The owner Sam Licker handed over his Rolex 5100, the Crown’s original foray into quartz. Only 1,000 were made—it’s estimated there are 100 in white gold and 900 in yellow, like Licker’s. The watch is nicknamed “The Texan” for reasons that aren’t really clear. Licker’s was number 511, a distinction engraved on the side of the case. He received the watch from his great uncle, a man so “neurotic,” according to his nephew, that he engraved the watch with both his name and social security number. He figured if he lost it this would be the best way to get it back (or it could lead to a devastating double whammy: lose your precious Rolex and your identity).

In the Delahaye on that crisp Thursday morning, Kendall spoke poetically about the cultural standing of automobiles. “Cars are everything,” he waxed, “cars are fashion, cars are technology, cars are aerodynamic, cars are politics, cars are religion, cars are literature. there's almost no story you can’t tell with a car.” Watches, though, are pretty cool, too—they are treasures hidden in plain sight, you just have to look closely. Or interrupt someone’s meal.

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