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An unusual "almost" Type XXPosted by slide1968
Dear all,
In the last months I started to develop an interest in small watch companies – sometimes pure watch assemblers – that despite their small size have their own history and originality, as well as being geographically restricted to specific areas. In particular I tried to find out how many companies like this were northern/Italy or even better Milano based. The search is always quite adventurous and surprising, since not much material is available, but slowly and step by step I discovered several niche brands (but not necessarily in the luxurious sense we usually give to this word) such as Squale, DPW, Pryngeps…some of them have already been introduced in this forum. My latest discovery is Wintex. Wintex Milano was born in 1958 when Caldex, a Milan based firm, acquired the brand name “Wintex” from Rolex Montres group. Apart from producing its own watches (casing mostly swiss movements such as Landeron, Eta and others) Wintex has been for a long time the Italian distributor of Breguet and Girard-Perregaux brands. Wintex watches were (are) quite classical for what concern the mechanical lineup, while are most fashion/glamour for the quartz collections. They also produce jewellery pieces, for external companies too. Having found their address on the web, I went to their headquarter in Milano, not far from the medieval castle. I had the chance to have a look at their mechanical timepieces collection, and I have to admit that – apart some aesthetical aspect I don’t fully like –they’re really amazing. Power reserve, retrograde date, triple retrograde second, big date, chronograph are some of the complications featured in these watches. I really appreciated the fact that – when asking which calibre was beating inside the cases - they had no hesitation in saying: Chinese Seagull movements. I had experience of sellers and watchmakers that tried to hide the Chinese nature of their watches, as if this was diminishing the mechanical value of the complications. To me Chinese calibres are not “the devil”….I already had the chance to appreciate Seagull (let me remind that they produce the 25% of world’s mechanical calibres) and their reliability in some watches I own. What I really appreciate the most is that these cheap movement allows the people to experiment the beauty of horological complications without the need to sell the house or the car. So I am not speaking of rare, beautifully finished, hand made movements…Which might perhaps appear a bit blasphemous to some of you my friends  but I am speaking of the possibility to have - for instance - a reliable column/wheel chrono, big date etc at far less than 500 euros…which is good for the mission to widespread the passion  for mechanical watchmaking.
Coming batch to Wintex watches, I have to say that the influence of Breguet design is evident, especially in the way that many hands are distributed over the dial, as well as for the dial finishing. Among all these watches my attention was caught by the Legionario, a hand wound chronograph Type XX style, two registers, moved by the well known Seagull ST1901. I think it is worth to spend some words about this calibre, since its history is quite  interesting.
In the early sixties of the past century the Swiss company Venus (well known and appreciated for its chrono calibers) was about to dismantle the tooling used since then to produce the Venus 175, because they needed to raise funds for developing the new calibre 188. Venus company first took contact with the Soviet Union to sell the machinery, but the Russians already had their valuable chronographs (you know, Poljot, Strela, etc) so they were not interested. At the same time, for political convenience, the Chinese were about to stop making use of Russians chronograph calibres for their watches, and were in the need to develop a self-made mechanism for their People's Liberation Army Air Force (this project was called the Project 304). So Venus sold to Chinese the 175 tooling machines, and by October 1965 the first Chinese-made chronographs were produced by the Tianjin Watch Factory. Since then many other calibres were produced, during the quartz crisis the development of mechanical watches was greatly reduced (except for the very low-end that was still pricely competitive against quartzes). However in 2003 the Project 304 and the production of mechanical watches only was revived and updated, giving birth to the ST19 caliber and its many variants. Seagull entered the USA market officially few years ago and is foreseen to enter the European Market by this autumn. Their offer should/will span from simple automatic watches to very complex tourbillons, double tourbillons, repetitions – all of them at a relatively affordable price. And it would be interesting to see how Swiss brands will react… Getting back to the Type XX style, I always loved it. Unfortunately I had not (yet) the chance to own one, but given the extremely reasonable price I decided to bought the Legionario as a sort of “trial”. 
The watch is quite small, about 38mm. The dial is the typical Type XX two registers, with small seconds at 9 and chrono minutes counter at 3. Subdials feature a nice filet circulaire pattern. Indexes are Arabic coated with luminova (good visibility in the dark). The glass is a plastic one. Chrono pushers are pump/style and the crown is onion/shaped with great grip. All of them are aligned, of course, since this is an integrated hand/wound chrono calibre featuring column-wheel distribution. 
The power reserve is about 40 hours, 19 Jewels, beating at 21600 vph. The case back is transparent and reveals an interesting mix of wheels, levers and screws ( forgive the ingenuity, this is the first chrono calibre I have full visibility of, being it manual wind) screws are blued (painted, of course…but not less aesthetically interesting than the fire-blued ones) and the bridges feature a sort of cote de geneve decoration, not exceptionally made but I can’t complain given the price… 
However, despite the cheapness, what is really absolutely mindblowing is the smoothness of pushers. Never tried a feeling like this, in none of the chrono I own. I only wonder how long this will last (is it a matter of good oiling in a new calibre or of perfect construction ?). 
The overall judgement for this watch is quite positive. I love the appearance, I love the way it works. I love a lot the quality/price ratio which I believe it is absolutely unbeatable for a brand new chrono. Only Swatch was able to do better in terms of price (their mech chrono are automatic !) but I think that quality is higher here, at least because there is no plastic in the mechanism. Finally, having my city’s name on the dial makes me proud  even if of course a real Type XX would never have that kind of signs…
A nice addition to my collection, and maybe a forerunner of a true Type XX (Breguet, Dodane, Vixa, who knows ? ) Regards from Milano, Slide68 Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2012 12:23PM by slide1968.
Hi Slide68,
I am borrowing these pictures from Harry taken from his website. My photography skills are not as good as his. Although it says bronze, it is actually brass. |
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