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Lankysudanese, a self-professed Porsche enthusiast, shares his unexpected admiration for a new Ferrari model, praising its beautiful curves and retro design. He draws a parallel between Ferrari's design direction and Longines' strategy of reinterpreting historical models, sparking a discussion among collectors about automotive aesthetics and industry evolution.
That being said, just the sight of the carbon front lip makes me nervous, even with nose lift it looks like a disaster waiting to happen!
The one difference with the watch world is that it has technically not progressed nearly as much as the automotive world in the last 50 years.
You would have mechanical watches with accuracy at a couple of microseconds off per day at a cost point of under US$1.000, with power reserves of 2 weeks or more 😉 The watch industry R&D is a microscopic fraction of the automotive R&D and as most watches beyond the quartz sphere are Veblenian goods performance doesn’t really matter, so…
Here's some more from a few years ago.
That’s progress from R&D, if you ask me. Meanwhile, the progress from R&D has increased the asking price for new Porsche and Ferrari (also Veblen goods) by almost two fold in the last decade. Hard to call one success and another failure IMHO
There’s a Veblen element in the automotive world as well. But like for like a modern car will have drastically raised its performance and efficiency. Even if one goes down the Porsche route a 25 or 30 year old would hardly know where the equivalent modern model went after a handful of corners. That’s not to say that there’s no charm or appeal to the vintage experience but the modern one happens at a much higher level of performance and efficiency (in spite of massively higher weight and size). W
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