P-51 Watch Is a Mustang You Wear on Your Wrist
An homage to the original, made with vintage Ford sheetmetal.
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Don’t you hate it when you back a Kickstarter campaign for action figures that fails to attract the requisite number of action-figure lovers? Yeah, that’s called caveat emptor, a.k.a., the pole dancer knows you’re drunk and will play you for every last dollar bill.
Color us cynical about Kickstarter. We’ve just seen too many dumb ideas to think it’s a safe place to invest. Unless, that is, we’re talking about a company with an established track record selling online and then, after the fact, harnessing KS to generate buzz for its coolest, latest widget.
Case in point, Danish brand REC Watches’ new P-51. The company already makes timepieces that incorporate elements of vintage cars; its Mini watches are made with dials cut from pieces of old Minis. The P-51 is made from old Ford Mustangs, and it is crushing it on Kickstarter, raising well beyond the makers’ stated $200,603 goal.
What’s especially cool about each P-51 is the dial plate is cut from vintage Mustangs (no Mustang II’s, they swear) destined for the scrap heap. The dials use the same vintage, funhouse-mirror, elongated font for numerals we remember from that era’s speedo, and the 44-millimeter case is properly chunky. The “fuel gauge” appearance to the power reserve shows how much life is left before winding (you should get a few days of juice), and even the date window looks like an ODO.
Each P-51 also comes with a number on the plate that corresponds to the VIN of the car the parts come from, and with a story card whose QR code takes the owner to a short video clip about the Mustang that the particular watch was born from. (You might think that would require a lot of videography but REC will be able to make a lot of watches from any single scrap-heap ’Stang.)
As for specs, REC has gone with reliable Japanese Miyota 9130 movement, a common choice for brands like Citizen, and complements it with stainless steel finishes and an anti-reflective crystal.
Not into the P-51? Choose among a Volkswagen Type 2 bus, Porsche 911 or Dodge Charger ('66-74) for the next vintage car REC should lionize on your wrist.
