The G.T.O. watch is a perfect cocktail of nature, mechanics, and design.
Nature is evoked by the coral – already interpreted in the Borgonovo watch – while mechanics and design draw direct inspiration from the legendary sports and racing cars of the 1960s.
The flowing line that had characterized the design of the Borgonovo watch – the first oval watch signed by Grimoldi, designed in the mid-1990s – is now enriched with even more vibrant emotions. The idea is to interpret and “embrace” the soft, romantic, and at the same time aggressive shape of the racing cars of the Sixties. For these emotional and aesthetic reasons, the adjectives that best describe the G.T.O. watch are: modern, revolutionary, unique, and magically romantic.
I look at my Bburago GTO model: a small car that, to me, is a muse. It has been with me since childhood and today it sits in my bedroom, between the mirror and the sink. Athena and Sole, my little girls, know that they can touch it only with their dad’s permission.
It watches me and moves me as always. It is perfect. Its shape is beautiful, soft, seductive, harmonious: like a woman’s body, like the song of the sirens.
With the car in my hands and bare feet, I walk into what in recent years has become my creative refuge: my home. The usual white table, the usual white sheets of paper, and the usual black pen are waiting for me.
…what if, in place of the 12-cylinder engine… I installed the ETA 2824 automatic movement…
In front of my “command post” – the drawing table – the Bburago model and tangible imaginary holograms fill the emptiness. My passion for the design of 1960s sports cars makes me daydream: the pen draws lines, overlaps, ideas, and shapes. Car and watch embrace, chase each other, brush against one another and then move apart, yet they always remain present. I know it, I feel it: the idea is being born.
A great arch ideally connects the car’s rear window to the front headlight cluster, forming the dome of the crystal, like a light soap bubble. Other arches sculpt the shape of the watch-car.
My vision, at times cubist and futurist, allows me to deconstruct and reassemble – in a deliberately “disordered” order – the technical details. I imagine the racing cars and transform them:
⊛ the car’s front air intake becomes the integration housing for the strap;
⊛ the sides of the bodywork are translated into the watch case;
⊛ the concept of structural protection is reflected in the case back, which safeguards the movement.
The outer “shell” of the watch takes shape: soft like a sculpture by Henry Moore, yet at the same time dynamic, fast, aerodynamic. The lines flowing across the paper bring to mind another absolute myth of design: the most famous creator of sports cars, Giovanni Battista Farina.
I wonder what he would think – and what his heirs would think today – of this “racing machine” of mine for the wrist.
…Satisfied with my G.T.O., I return to dreaming to complete the project…
The watch case seems to have emerged from a wind tunnel, like those used to test the aerodynamics of racing cars. The pen draws lines that chase one another, while the mind searches for suggestions and images. Through a true alchemy of forms, the typical three-spoke knock-off hub that secured the wheels to the hub of competition cars is transformed into the winding crown: the same shape, the same mechanical locking value.
And what if, instead of an engine, there were a Swiss mechanical self-winding movement?
Perhaps the excellent ETA 2824.
A perfect, exceptional, absolute union.
With my imagination I step into the cockpit: I gather inspirations, I go “shopping” for ideas.
The chrome frame of the tachometer becomes the support for the date lens; the red of the indicators colors the day-of-the-month pointer.
Seated in the driver’s seat, I grasp the steering wheel and project it into the watch: the three spokes become the seconds hand. Like a music box, its movement marks the ticking of time.
The slender gear lever and its spherical knob are transformed into the eight hour markers, coated in Super-LumiNova and glowing like headlights in the night. Completing the dial’s graphic design are two large applied numerals, 12 and 6, light, curved, aerodynamic: they seem to have been drawn by the wind caressing the bodywork in motion.
From the engine I “steal” the timing belts and transform them into the hour and minute hands: two large elements that cross the skeleton of the dial. From the engine also comes the inspiration for the central ring of the dial, fixed with four screws, like the power unit anchored to the chassis. Four diagonal bars cross the opening of the dial, recalling lattice reinforcement structures and giving the timepiece a strong mechanical and structural personality.
