Plenty of watch brands venture (more or less legitimately) into automotive terrain. Not Reservoir. The French-born, Swiss-Made brand doesn't just make the occasional incursion into the automotive world. It has gasoline running through its veins. This year's novelties deliver further proof of the brand's longstanding affiliation with motor racing.
Explicit lyrics
The 390 Fastback presented during Watches and Wonders week is dedicated to a legendary pony car, the Mustang, and while the Mustang design is protected by copyright, Reservoir makes overt allusions in the number "390" – the displacement of the V8 engine of the 1968 Mustang, as driven by Steve McQueen in Bullitt – and the word "Fastback", which describes the car's distinctive single slope from nose to tail. Could it be any more explicit?
Reservoir is equally emphatic in its choice of colour, namely highland green - a direct reference to the Fastback that McQueen speeds through the San Francisco streets in Bullitt's cult car-chase scene -, blue and black. There is also a limited edition in black that cites the more recent (early 2000s) Mustang Bullitt, which Ford released as two limited editions, in highland green and shadow black.
A brand-new dial feature
Allusions to the pony car continue on the dial, starting with the font which is the same as on the Mustang's counters. While Reservoir's signature retrograde minutes counter extends from 0 to 60 across a 240-degree arc, in a break with previous designs, jumping hours are displayed at 6 o'clock in an arc-shaped aperture. As Reservoir marketing director François-Marie Neycensas explains, "it completes the retrograde minute arc to form a perfect circle, identical to the round tachymeter on the Mustang 1968 which was the first to feature this circular design; previous models all had a linear tachy."
Get your kicks...
On the limited-edition version, a fabulous padded strap shouts out to the original seats on the Mustang 1968: a design classic that's still seen on sports cars and on Elixir Aircraft planes. The models joining the regular collection, on the other hand, are mounted on a more classic, elegant leather strap with topstitching. The distinction is clear between the regular collection and the black iteration which comes as a highly limited edition of 66 pieces. Why 66? "A nod to the project's codename, Route 66," says François-Marie Neycensas.
The 390 Fastback is already proving a global hit, with orders from Asia, the Mustang's native United States but also France, Reservoir's home market and a country that maintains particularly close ties with the Mustang via the Mustang Club de France.
