Chopard Zagato Lab One Concept Watch Review
The Chopard Zagato Lab One Concept is a highly exclusive timepiece, limited to just 19 pieces. Crafted in ceramicised titanium, the model weighs a mere 43.2 grammes, including the strap, yet forgoes nothing in terms of mechanical refinement. Mark McArthur-Christie, confessed petrolhead and watch obsessive, reviews this latest high-performance product of Fleurier in his own distinctive style.
Zagato – a name synonymous with lightness and speed
If Tim Birkin’s 1931 Bentley 4.5 litre Blower, with its Amherst Villiers-developed supercharger and built-like-a-brick lines, is a sledgehammer, the slim Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Spider Corto Zagato is a scalpel. Weighing in at, near as spit, 625 kg lighter and with a smaller capacity engine, it surgically dismantled the opposition at Le Mans (twice), Spa, the Targa Florio and all circuits west.
It is also the most beautiful car of its period. That seamless wave from front wing to rear should be as well-known as one of Hokusai’s.
The Spider Corto was the result of Ugo Zagato combining his coachbuilding learning with his experience at aircraft manufacturer Officine Aeronautiche Ansaldo-Pomilio to produce lighter, stronger, and thus faster, cars.
So what on earth is a watch company doing producing a new model alongside a coachbuilder? After all, unless you’re hefting a Deepsea or an original PloProf around, it’s unlikely you’ve thought to yourself, ‘I really wish my watch was lighter.’ The answer is, as is so often the case in Watchworld, the people involved.
Chopard – a passion for cars
Karl-Friedrich Scheufele (Chopard’s Co-President) has the sort of car collection that only a proper petrolhead would run. At this point, we should point out that Escapement is far from dissing classic Bentleys; Scheufele runs his own sledgehammer 4.5-litre 1929 Le Mans Tourer alongside the other inhabitants of his 30-car garage. It’s a garage that houses an eclectic mix from the driver’s choice Porsche, the 911 2.7RS, a 1965 Mini Cooper, an ex-Stirling Moss Jaguar XK120 and a Porsche tractor through to a Renault 4. He learned to drive in his father’s MkII Jaguar and he still has his Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster. It’s hard to know whether his veins run with 20W50 or Moebius 8000.
Chopard Zagato Lab One Concept – the third collaboration
Fittingly, Scheufele met Andrea Michele Zagato, President of the eponymous coachbuilding company, on the route of the Mille Miglia; a race Chopard has partnered with since 1988. The two men and their teams have already worked on two watches together – the first in 2013 with the Mille Miglia Zagato Chronograph and again in 2019, with the Mille Miglia Classic Chronograph Zagato 100th Anniversary Edition. The Lab One Concept is their third collaboration and proves a very different watch indeed.
Chopard Zagato Lab One Concept – ceramicised titanium and aluminium
Where the Mille Miglia collaborations were relatively traditional in the sense they had a conventional dial, hands and case, the Lab One Concept takes a different approach. A ceramicised titanium L.U.C 04.04-L movement with its aluminium tourbillon carriage is suspended in a ceramicised case on four elastomer dampers. There is no dial, instead the watch uses the contrast between the dark grey of the movement plates and rhodium-plated openworked hour and minute hands. This may be the most un-Chopardy Chopard yet.
It’s not hard to see where the inspiration for all this cleverness has come from. ‘Light’ has been a Zagato watchword since Day One back in 1919. And lightness – when it comes to fast cars – comes down either to material choice or construction method.
One of the most effective ways to lighten non-power train components is to change the material used; aluminium alloy rather than steel for body panels, for example. Changing the construction method to remove material you don’t need is a little trickier, but it’s all about balancing strength with lightness. For example, using chassis tubes rather than solid rails. Yes, a solid bar or strut is stronger than a tube, but it’s a heck of a lot heavier. A hollow tube gives greater buckling resistance under compression relative to its mass because most of the material is at the outer edges – where it resists bending most. Ditching unnecessary weight from the tube’s centre makes it far lighter.
If you had rich friends at school who could afford a bicycle made with light and thin Reynolds 531 tubing (753 was for the time trialling and racing pros), it was obvious how much stronger their frames were than your old and heavy ‘tip special clunkers’.
Chopard and Zagato have applied the same principles to the Lab One. If it moves, it’s been lightened and strengthened. If it doesn’t move, it’s still been lightened. The result? A tourbillon chronometer that weighs in at 36.5 grammes (sans strap). It gives you some idea of how light that is when the strap (itself no heavyweight) adds nearly 20% to the scales to bring the overall weight up to 43.2 grammes; about the same as 8 sheets of A4.
Chopard Zagato Lab One Concept – case
It starts with the 42 mm case (just over 11 mm deep). This is made from (you guessed it) ceramicised titanium. This is the stuff you’d use for the valves in high-performance engines or turbine components in jet engines. Dental implants too, as it’s hypoallergenic. Titanium is a cracking good material for watches, but although it forms an oxide layer, it’s not the toughest of stuff and scratches pretty easily. Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) takes advantage of its propensity to oxidise and gives it a thick, hard, ceramic-like oxide layer. ‘Hard’, in this case, means 1,000 Vickers – tough enough unless you happen to hang around industrial abrasives all day or lay bricks for a living. For contrast, Grade 5 titanium is around 350 Vickers.
The ceramicising process takes titanium from its usual iridescent grey to anthracite – almost like a DLC coating. So Chopard bead blasts it (serious beads, presumably, to make any impact) to give the case a matte finish and dull down any glare.
The crown is made from the same material and, neatly, cut like a helical gear – the sort you’d find in a gearbox or a diff. The same material gets used for the tubular open-loop ‘lugs’ that you can adjust and lock to fit the curve of your wrist. The lugs also act as external shock-absorbers for the movement.
The glass box crystal, fitted flush with the case sides, gives you a view of the way the case and its tubular construction inner ring suspend the movement – there’s clear air visible all the way around the movement. The caseback takes the same approach – a sapphire disc that extends right to the case edges.
Construction matters as much as the choice of materials. Here, the case is really an outer, ceramicised titanium ring with an opening for the crown and four mounting points for the strap system. The movement is held in place by that shock-absorbing inner, tubular mount, and attached by four elastomer-damped mounting points. It’s probably inadvisable to try knocking nails in with your Lab One, but it would probably survive even if it is rather on the light side.
Chopard Zagato Lab One Concept – L.U.C Calibre 04-04-L
If you’re a dedicated L.U.Cian, you’ll probably spot the similarities between the L.U.C Calibre 04.04-L movement and the maker’s 2010 L.U.C Engine One with its Calibre 04.01-L. The difference here is partly in architecture (the new movement is circular rather than straight edged) and plate construction, but primarily in materials choice.
Where the Engine One used nickel silver for the mainplate and bridges, the Lab One uses, yes, more ceramicised titanium. This makes absolute sense as the material is strong and light as well as massively corrosion and damage-resistant. And, from an aesthetic point of view, making major movement components from the same material as the case is neat.
The movement runs at 28,800 vph (4 Hz) and uses a 60-second tourbillon which doubles as the small seconds dial. Again, a different materials choice with an aluminium cage, because everything’s been focused on making the movement – as well as the rest of the watch – as light as it can be.
It’s as accurate as possible too, with a Variner free-sprung balance that sets the weights inside the balance wheel’s rim, cutting down fractional air resistance and improving shock resistance.
It’s not all tech, though; there’s plenty to delight finishing aficionados. Polished screw heads and gleaming sinks, and the mix of the Zagato Z motif and Chopard name on the dial side. With all this grey titanium, things could have appeared excessive, but thankfully that’s not the case. Chopard has retained the idea of depicting the power reserve indicator as a ‘fuel gauge’ with a minute pop of red on the ‘R’, underscored by the power reserve’s visible gears. And the dark titanium finish works a treat, contrasting with the skeletonised rhodium-plated hands. It may be a little fanciful, but is there a similarity between their lines and a Zagato Bristol 406’s steering wheel spokes?
Closing remarks
This may not be a Chopard for everyone (not least of all because the maker is only producing 19 examples) and perhaps not for some L.U.Cians who may expect something more conventional in appearance. But if a materials technology, engineering and Haute Horlogerie fusion is your thing, you’d best get your appointment in the book before all examples find homes. It’ll be interesting to see if this is Chopard further exploring a new market after the Engine One’s success or using the Lab One as a testbed to see how much of this technology makes it into the firm’s more mainstream watches.
Further reading
https://www.chopard.com/en-gb/
Technical Specification
- Model: Chopard Zagato Lab One Concept
- Reference: 168636-3001
- Case: Anthracite-coloured beadblasted ceramicised titanium, diameter 42 mm, height 11.15 mm, water resistance 5 ATM (50 metres), sapphire crystal to front, exhibition caseback.
- Functions: hours, minutes, small seconds, tourbillon, power-reserve indicator, stop-seconds function
- Movement: hand-wound movement, frequency 28,800 vph (4 Hz), 29 jewels, power reserve 60 hours, chronometer-certified (COSC)
- Strap: two strap options: technical fabric with hook-and-loop fastener and anthracite-coloured ceramicised titanium loop; or calfskin leather with engraved pin buckle
- Price upon request
- Limited Edition: 19 pieces