Watch

Cartier Santos

by Ahmet Aydin @watchmania

Like many of us my interest in timepieces goes back a long way. Over the years I’ve used vintage timepieces, modern watches, dress watches, chronographs, divers, pilot watches, of all classes and price levels. Many of them have been part of my collection and then went out. Some of them were the watches that were given to me for a while to review and have a user experience with them. In any case I’m always excited when I first get a watch I’ve never seen before. It has always been a great pleasure to take it into my hands and touch it, and adjust the time and put it on my wrist. Possibly this infatuation has reached people through Instagram and allowed me to reach more than half a million followers.

I’ve always liked Cartier. I think that they have been manufacturing timepieces for true gentlemen and gentlewomen, and that they are a ‘Maison’ that has improved in years, while they still keep alive that glorious and noble air of the early 1900s. As all aficionado will know, one of the brands that had initiated the present watch industry is Cartier. It was Cartier who ensured the wrist watches to become a part of the daily life by crafting a wrist watch in its true sense, though of course there had been some brands that produced wrist watches before.

They have been very much admired with the models they have launched in recent years and they reached out to a larger mass of people. Although there’ve been some flying high exceptions like Richard Mille and MB&F coming to my mind, many brands in the world of horology have been trying to reach their target group by emphasising the pride they take in their past and forging a link with their old models.

Among modern Cartier models, the ones that have mostly attracted my attention were Santos, Dumont and Tank Americaine. In fact I also love the classical Tank model, but I prefer the vintages and especially the ones with precious metals, instead of modern ones in that model. I had a yellow gold vintage Cartier Tank for a period, and now wonder why I sold that watch. You know this is what the horology world is; they come and they go. Sometimes you may even buy the same watch again. One day, I may buy again a vintage Tank.

Now if I’m to get to the point, I was very excited with the revamp of the Santos and Santos Dumont family in 2018, due to my admiration for Cartier and my respect for its past. My first impressions were very much positive. In recent months a desire to buy a new steel watch that I couldn’t resist –and you know how. So I went to Cartier without looking at any other brand and focused on the Santos, Santos Dumont and Americaine models.

In fact it didn’t take long for me to decide and after trying on all three watches, I bought the Santos offered together with a leather strap and a steel bracelet. Although I couldn’t find any flaw in Dumont, the fact that it was delivered only with a quartz movement and had no steel bracelet at all led me to eliminate it.

The situation is much complex with the Americaine; the medium-sized model that I tried on didn’t fit somehow on my wrist at all, and I just couldn’t feel comfortable with it. Besides I noticed that the central seconds hand doesn’t look great to me. I think what I’ve said about the Tank model is also true of the Tank Americaine. This model would be much better with precious metal and manual winding mechanism. I just didn’t want an automatic steel Americaine with central seconds.

The Santos that I went for was the medium one. The large Santos didn’t look so good on my wrist. In addition another plus to the medium Santos was that it didn’t have a date window. When I first took the watch in my hand to review what surprised me about the watch was its weight, or rather its lightness! Although I liked the old generation Santos, when I put it on my wrist I didn’t like the feeling it gave me with its heftiness. The New Santos is so different from the previous model and once again has the classical Cartier elegance. The fact that it is offered with both a steel bracelet and leather strap was also very effective in my decision.

After I took the watch home I removed the plastic protective film on it and examined it in more details. First of all I realised that it was, in case form much more similar than the previous generations of Santos, to the watch Louis Cartier produced in 1904 for his friend the Brazilian aviator Albertos Santos Dumont.

Santos is a model that has its own peculiar design codes and a robust history and yet the new updated design has now become a modern watch without leaving the historical codes.

To sum up, I bought the medium-sized steel version of Cartier Santos and I wear it often. It’s quite a practical watch in my daily life since it’s an automatic, timeonly model with a bracelet. The retail price of the watch at www.cartier.com website is £5,950 including VAT. If you ask me there are many watches at twice this price that don’t appear to have such a quality of workmanship. The Cartier Santos gives you a quality feeling much more than its price.