Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1 Watch Review
The Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1 is the latest collaboration from the esteemed Swiss watch brand and the legendary design company known for creating some of the most stylish cars ever made. Mark McArthur-Christie, a self-confessed watch geek and car fanatic, examines the specification of this ultra-refined, contemporary creation.
Pininfarina founded in 1930
Perhaps it’s fitting that the last design Battista “Pinin” Farina signed off, just a few days before his death in 1966, wasn’t a wallet-immolating supercar or a motorshow model that would never see action on the road. It was the beautiful Alfa Romeo Spider ‘Duetto’; a car that was accessible to anyone who valued having something beautiful on their driveway over cash in the bank.
Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1 – jolly good value
If you’re not a Watchworld inhabitant, it’s perhaps hard to draw the connection between the Duetto and this new Pininfarina-designed Bovet. After all, most sane people will regard a $57,000 watch as almost the opposite of accessible and pretty close to insanity. But this is the home for the watch-afflicted (although the unafflicted sane are welcome). In the light of watches costing as much as a house, it is possible (with the appropriate mental and financial gymnastics) to regard this new Bovet as jolly good value. It’s certainly something beautiful you could have on your wrist rather than leaving the cash in the bank.
Bovet x Pininfarina – a history of working together
This isn’t the Cambiano-based design team’s first outing with Bovet. They’ve already worked on the appropriately named Cambiano, the Ottanta (and Ottantasei) and the Sergio (named after the founder’s son). The family resemblance is clear on both sides – no small achievement when you’re trying to reconcile the approach of a pretty futuristic Italian design firm with a Swiss watchmaker that’s been around since 1822. The modern Bovet lugwork, pocket watch pendant winding crown and scalloped case sides meet the colour, rounded lines and futurism of Pininfarina.
Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1 – skeleton watch
You get rather less for your money, though, than with some Bovets. This is entirely intentional and in no sense a bad thing. Skeletonised watches have been around since the mid-eighteenth century. The idea is the horological equivalent of spillikins – it’s all about how much you can take away before it all goes wrong. In this case, anything extraneous has been stripped away. The bridges and plates have been filigreed to the point where even the third and fourth wheels’ jewels’ placement requires the pared-back bridge to be flared to accommodate them. One imagines that Bovet’s management placed a careful cordon around the espresso machine to deter their craftspeople from overconsumption. This is not the movement to be working on with shaky hands.
Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1 – finishing
Once you’ve cut the plates and bridges, and cut them some more, you might just need that espresso. There’s more than 10 hours of finishing in an Aperto. For a start, they’re bead-blasted to create that textured graining. Bead blasting isn’t usually hideously hard, but start blasting particles into something as thin and finely cut as one of these bridges and it’ll very easily end up like a bent paperclip. Then you’ll need to be graining the flanks, polishing the stone holes, same for each of the screws and bevels, adding some perlage and anglage, then applying circular Côtes de Genève.
Then, before you’re finished, you can finish the finishing with either a PVD (physical vapour deposition) or a CVD (chemical vapour deposition) coating, depending on the colour you want. PVD and CVD coating involve not just two different colours but two completely different processes; PVD involves creating a thin film over a bridge or a plate with a solid or liquid source material, while CVD creates the film from a gaseous source material.
Does Bovet really need to finish a watch to this level – and by hand, too? Couldn’t it just do most of the work with a neat bit of CNC programming? Of course it could, but one only has to look at Oxford Parkway station or most electric cars to see how ugly the world would be with such a bleakly utilitarian approach.
Bovet Caliber 15BMPF09-OW
Thanks to sapphire crystals both front and back, the in-house movement is on full display. You’ll be looking at the Bovet Caliber 15BMPF09-OW. The firm has taken a distinctly DIY, as opposed to GSETDI (get someone else to do it), approach with the movement. It has fabricated the plates and bridges and even made the hands, dials and cases; components that are usually outsourced by most firms. The balance and hairspring are Bovet’s too. All in all, there are 219 components, 38 jewelled bearings and everything will run happily at 21,600 vph for 7 days thanks to a distinctly chunky mainspring and barrel.
Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1 – Grade 5 titanium case
All this horological hard work is housed in a Grade 5 titanium case. Why Grade 5? Would not a posher, purer grade of metal be better? Not in the real world. Grade 5 titanium might be the most common titanium alloy, but it’ll take temperatures of up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit (at which point, you won’t be worrying about what your watch case is made from), it’s light, corrosion resistant and pretty good at brushing off scratches. That’s down to the addition of aluminium, vanadium and iron. It’s also the sort of stuff you make aircraft turbines from.
If you’ve had a smooth-finished titanium watch, you’ll also know that they’re absolute fingerprint magnets. Bovet has even thought of that (although it might have been Pininfarina’s idea – we weren’t able to find out) and have given the case a good sandblasting. No chance of fingerprints and smudges showing up on that finish. So there.
Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1 – a modern Bovet
The design is very much modern Bovet – a crown at 12 and a detachable strap that lets you use the watch as a pocket watch or sit it on your desk to look at to take your mind off those interminable Teams calls. Its designers have taken the Amadeo simple-strap-swap system a stage further; now all you have to do to remove the strap is push the two buttons on the ends of the lugs and off it comes. Thoughtfully, the firm supplies the watch with two straps, so you can experiment as Seb regales everyone with Q4’s projections.
Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1 – legibility
All this cleverness is all very well. The finishing is glorious. The design is striking. The movement’s a peach. But can you tell the time on an Aperto? Skeletonised watches are hardly known for their legibility, after all.
Pininfarina has thought of that and has come up with an elegant, simple solution for it. Anything involved with telling the time has a colour. You can have your Aperto in a choice of blue or yellow, but the principle is the same. Around the dial edge is a white infilled coloured chapter ring that contrasts with the plates and bridges underneath. The hands are likewise. At six, the revolving second ring is coloured as is the power reserve indicator between 9 and 10. The plate backing the hands picks up the colour too. And, just as a finishing touch (maybe a nod to Pininfarina’s automotive heritage) the crown has a twin-tracked rubber shroud that looks a little like a tyre in the same shade.
Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1 – closing thoughts
It would have been easy for a collaboration between Pininfarina and Bovet to have ended up as a bit of a cheesefest. Lots of unnecessary automotive cues, putting logos on the dial, attempts to echo past design successes – and, bluntly, who wouldn’t blame the firm that came up with the Stratos? But the Aperto is far from that. Instead, you have a watch that is clearly a Bovet but also unmistakably Pininfarina-designed – the best of both, if you like.
Further reading
Technical specification
- Model: Bovet x Pininfarina Aperto 1
- Case: Grade 5 titanium, diameter 42 mm, height 10.95 mm, water resistance 3 ATM (30 metres); sapphire crystal to front; exhibition case back.
- Functions: hours, minutes, seconds
- Movement: caliber 15BMPF09-OW, hand-wound movement, frequency 21,600 vph (3 Hz), power reserve 7 days, 219 components.
- Strap: Amadeo-inspired interchangeable rubber strap (two straps included)
- Price: CHF 48,800 before taxes (RRP as of 26.2.2024)