Somewhere under all that grime and scratches is a great vintage diver, a Pontiac Hydraulica 20.
(Click pictures to enlarge)
Founded in 1931 by Dutchman Ali Kinsbergen, Pontiac was named after a Native American Indian chief who could tell the time using the stars. Intent on creating robust watches for sporting use from the outset, Kinsbergen demonstrated the pedigree of his product to a gathering of press media in 1935 by throwing one of his watches from the roof of the Boerentoren in Antwerp, the tallest building in Belgium at the time (87.5 m / 287 ft). The watch was still running on recovery and the stunt served as good marketing for the fledgling brand.
Their link with sport was strengthened further when in 1951 they sponsored the Dutch Tour de France team following victory in the 1950 Bordeaux-Paris by Dutch rider Wim van Est. During a high speed descent in the Tour of 1951, Van Est misjudged a turn, plunged 70 meters down a ravine and was very lucky to survive. What also survived was his Pontiac watch, an opportunity that Pontiac deemed too good to miss and their subsequent advertising featured Van Est at the bottom of the ravine, crying, with the slogan “Zeventig meter viel ik diep, m’n hart stond stil, maar m’n Pontiac liep” (I fell 70 metres, my heart stopped, but my Pontiac kept going).
Though the fall cost Van Est the Tour (he was wearing the yellow jersey at the time), he became a national hero in Holland and the Pontiac marketing campaign was a success too, doubling sales to 160,000 the following year.
I have no doubt that the diver in this post would have survived too as it is certainly a solid timepiece. Known collectively as ‘Supercompressor divers’ this style of watch was produced by several manufacturers during the 1970’s. Although differing in looks they all shared the Supercompressor style case with an internal diving bezel and two prominent crowns. Here are a couple of other examples from Rodania and Wittnauer.
What isn’t obvious from these front facing pictures is the thickness of the crystal which is typical of this style of watch, a super-thick, high dome divers acrylic.
While this style of crystal is thick enough to allow significant scratches and crazing to be polished out, the high dome is susceptible to chips on the outer edge and finding replacement crystals is very difficult these days. The crystal holds the internal bezel in place and there are slight differences in case sizes so crystals aren’t guaranteed to fit all watches.
With the Pontiac removed from the case, the condition of the dial and hands was encouraging with only minor spotting on the dial, most of which I was able to remove, and all the original lume intact.
The difference in lume colour between the dial markers and hands on vintage watches is often attributed to the hands having been relumed, though that isn’t always the case. Very few manufacturers produced their own dials and hands in-house, the parts were mostly ordered from third party suppliers. Consequently, dials and hands would have been produced by several manufacturers using different lume compounds and while they would probably have been the same colour when new, after 40+ years of exposure to UV light etc, the lume compounds age differently which is most likely the case here.
Looking at other examples online it seems that this watch was produced with two styles of hands during its production run, the broad arrow style hands seen here and also the baton hands shown below. (This picture also includes an example of the Hydraulica 20 World Time which is rare bird indeed.)
Inside the watch is a Pontiac branded ETA Cal. 2452, a 25 jewel calibre with a beat rate of 18,000 bph. The ETA 24xx family is a real work-horse range of calibres that can be found in many different watches produced during the 1960 and 70’s. As you can see, this one was more than due a service and a good clean for the case was certainly in order.
There were no hidden surprises this time so with the movement serviced, case cleaned, crystal polished and a new caseback gasket fitted the watch was soon back in action.
Pontiac are still trading and while their current range is mostly quartz based, there are a couple of Valjoux 7750 powered chronographs available. Here is a link to their website: Pontiac Watches.
PS. I think that they should have reinstated the vintage Pontiac logo with the extended ‘P’ and 3 stars as it’s much cooler than the one they have now (in my opinion anyway!)
Rich.
** Many thanks to Francois Canters for letting me feature his watch on the blog. **
