Watch Marketing, The 1967 Enicar Ultrasonic with Guilloché Dial

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Enicar is not a watch brand that has been covered enough on Life on the Wrist. Selfishly, the research of these watches is fairly limited if one compares it to other watch brands of a similar era. But hopefully this will be the start of documenting the history of an interesting and important brand.

So who is Enicar? Enicar was founded in 1913 by Ariste Racine who reversed her surname and established the brand “Enicar”. The Racine family was known for watchmaking prior to 1913 and were based in Granges, Switzerland. Ariste Racine produced high quality timepieces for European soldiers and railway crew during World War I. In 1930, the company set up a new factory in Bienne and began producing automatic, waterproof watches that became a huge success for the brand. They also ventured into producing dive, divette, and mini-dive watches know as the Sherpa series.

The Sherpa line of watches became a staple for the brand and they ended up design Sherpa jet watches that were designated by the the US Air Force during World War II. This tool-natured watch expanded to more aviation pieces, as well as moutaineering timing instruments. Most famously, in 1956, the Swiss Expedition to summit Mount Everest and the Himalayan Ranges was underway and one of the members, Ernst Reiss, wore an Enicar and credited the watch for its exceptional precision in extreme weather conditions. Additionally, the brand launched the waterproof Ultrasonic dive watch known as the Sea Pearl shortly thereafter.

Before we go into the specific watch we are looking at today, another interesting fact about the Enicar Ultrasonic Sherpa is that it was installed on the rudder of Mayflower II - the replica of the 17th century Mayflower - and went on a 50-day Atlantic voyage keeping excellent time, credited by the ship Captain Alan Villiers. While this has very little significance of any merit, it certainly showed the world what Enicar was capable of producing and likely helped the brand through research.

Their story continues, but we will save that for a later time. The Enicar we have today is one of the Ultrasonic models. The first question is, what is Ultrasonic referring to? Well in the 50s, competition between brands was extremely high and meant innovation had to lead the way. Enicar implemented a new process at their production facilities in 1953 called ‘Ultrasonic’ cleaning. The process included using ultrasonic (soundwaves) to agitate the fluid, which would in turn produce ultrasound waves and vibrations that create bubbles. The effect of agitating the fluid was to more thoroughly clean the movement of the watch. Enicar also stated that is preserved the oils in the movement for longer.

This appearing on the dial of a watch was a clear attempt to market their watches as being more reliable and on the cutting edge of watchmaking. This specific Ultrasonic was manufactured in 1967. The watch has gold plated, dur aluminum case that has signs of wear, but is in overall good condition. Duralumin is a strong, hard, lightweight alloy of aluminum, widely used in aircraft construction and was discovered in 1906. With the watch on the wrist or in the hand, one can definitely feel the lightweight nature of the material. Additionally, the gold plating has a lighter colour compared to other examples.

The 35mm case sits large and flat on the wrist, with moderate size lugs. Again, for such a large case, it is extremely light. The dial has an incredible sunburst, guilloché finish. The sunburst pattern is extremely attractive and gives the rather simple watch a bit of depth and texture. The subsidiary seconds at 6 o’clock also has a circular pattern so if one looks closely, the pattern provides a bit of contrast to the rest of the dial. The watch also has applied hour markers, and the subsidiary seconds at 6 o’clock is recessed into the dial.

The watch runs on the manual wind caliber AR 1292 movement. The movement is a work horse movement with minimal finishing. The bridge that suspends the balance wheel is stamped with the import code EZR, which was the import code used by Enicar to import movements to the USA. Brands during this period would import movements to the USA instead of the completed watches to reduce their tariff burden.

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