This new Daytona would go on to command waiting lists that spanned years, set Rolex up for this new era of massive demand and little supply. And this would be the saviour of the brand, because who would want to buy all these ready-made movements for their up-and-coming chronograph but Rolex?ĭespite this good fortune, the new, automatic Rolex Daytona with its El Primero movement didn’t do so much to re-establish Zenith’s reputation as it did to overshadow it.
Three years later and the company was under Swiss ownership once more, replete with a supply of unassembled El Primeros ready to go thanks to Vermot’s quick thinking. So, Vermot hid it all, the plans, the tooling, the parts-everything-in the factory attic. The El Primero may not have been first, but it was still the collective result of the hard work and passion of this once proud watch company, and he wasn’t about to see it liquidated. All the plans, all the equipment, were to be sold off-but not if disgruntled Zenith watchmaker Charles Vermot had anything to do with it. Things went from bad to worse as quartz technology swooped in, and after a buyout, Zenith was shut down in 1975.
Sure, the regrettably named El Primero was still the first integrated automatic chronograph-that is, designed as a singular unit rather than modular-but it came second where it really counted. But a group of watchmakers-including Heuer and Breitling-got there first, by building an automatic chronograph in stages: first, the automatic movement, and then the chronograph module that sat on top. It was to be the first, the original automatic chronograph, the final piece of the puzzle in the technological ascension of the mechanical watch. The El Primero was born to a cursed life.
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