Revolutions per minute. We could be talking about pistons punching inside a V8 engine, causing 30,000 explosions every sixty seconds. Or we could be discussing a hand on a chronograph sweeping the watch face in the time it takes another hand to click once. Timepieces and combustion automobiles are both slaves to RPM.
One may live in a garage, the other on a wrist but both are objects of desire. One measures time, the other devours it. They’re both motorised status symbols celebrated for the precision of their engineering. A Vacheron Constantin has as much to do with telling the time as a Ferrari does to getting from A to B. It is little wonder that the two go together so well.
The motor car has relied on accurate time keeping since the first tyre met tarmac, and motorsport is inseparable from the stopwatch. A race is measured not in laps or miles but in fractions of a second, with the difference between victory and defeat often less than a blink. Before the advent of electronic timing, mechanical chronographs were indispensable tools. Drivers would measure lap times with them, team managers would place their cars by them and spectators could track the action with a glance at their wrists.
City AM Magazine
Revolutions per minute. We could be talking about pistons punching inside a V8 engine, causing 30,000 explosions every sixty seconds. Or we could be discussing a hand on a chronograph sweeping the watch face in the time it takes another hand to click once. Timepieces and combustion automobiles are both slaves to RPM.
One may live in a garage, the other on a wrist but both are objects of desire. One measures time, the other devours it. They’re both motorised status symbols celebrated for the precision of their engineering. A Vacheron Constantin has as much to do with telling the time as a Ferrari does to getting from A to B. It is little wonder that the two go together so well.
The motor car has relied on accurate time keeping since the first tyre met tarmac, and motorsport is inseparable from the stopwatch. A race is measured not in laps or miles but in fractions of a second, with the difference between victory and defeat often less than a blink. Before the advent of electronic timing, mechanical chronographs were indispensable tools. Drivers would measure lap times with them, team managers would place their cars by them and spectators could track the action with a glance at their wrists.