One of my biggest pleasures in April is to attend the event at the Grand Palais which celebrates the start of the Tour Auto. I remind you that the Tour Auto is a competition which lasts a small week and which mixes "true races" and regularity contests per category. But the main characteristic of this event is that the cars involved are classic cars including some very rare ones.
Let's take an example: this year, a very rare Ferrari Breadvan who participated at the Le Mans race in 1962 was amongst the constestants' cars. It was for me a great surprise to see it since I didn't know its existence before...
There was obviously another reason for my presence on the starting line: the ability to see the new Hublot watch which is the official piece of the event. Last year, Hublot unveiled a Classic Fusion chronograph with a white dial. It was a very important watch for Hublot because it celebrated the first year of the partnership between the brand and the event.
This year, the recipe is basically the same but with a black dial.
The official watch of the Tour Auto 2014 is a Classic Fusion chronograph with a titanium case. its dial combines satin-finished black sunrays for its main part, vertical red, white and blue stripes (a nod to the French flag) and two silver subdials with satin-finished sunrays. The interesting point is that the stripes are extended on the calfskin strap what creates a nice visual effect (the same trick was used last year).
The result at the end is very different visual speaking from last year watch: the 2013 watch made me think about a pure summer watch thanks to its bright colours. The 2014 watch is more elegant, maybe more refined. You just play with the colours... and you get opposite feelings!
The watch is powered by the HUB1143 modular movement using a Dubois-Dépraz module. The frequency is 4hz and the power reserve around 42 hours.
Let's browse some pics of this watch:
You can see the high contrast between the main part of the dial and the subdials: