I’ll be honest: A story about a new watch, even a badass watch inspired by Porsche and created by Porsche Design, is fairly left-of-center for the CARiD Drive blog. You’re more likely to be on this website to find a way to make your 911 faster (tires, it’s always tires) than you are to be looking for timekeeping advice. But bear with me; I love watches almost as much as cars, and if you feel the same way, you’re going to dig this.
The chronograph you see here is an incredibly faithful representation of the original Porsche Design Chronograph 1, the watch F.A. Porsche designed as the best-ever company swag before it was offered to the public for sale. In the 1970s the OG was sold at Porsche dealerships, and some version of this stealth-cool timepiece has been on sale now for decades. Look around the next time you’re at a high-end car show or concourse, and I promise you’ll see a few of these on wrists.
Porsche Design does a lot of special editions and collabs of the Chrono 1, all of them neat but some more interesting from a design perspective than others. The same can be said for Hodinkee, which tends to elevate interesting historical details when it partners on a watch, rather than elevating its own brand. Here the collaboration works because the formula is simple: update the original for 2024.
Watch case and bracelet are rendered in lightweight titanium – if you’ve never worn a titanium watch I’m begging you to give it a try – and finished in a super-hard titanium-carbide, matte-black coating. At 40.8 millimeters wide and 14.5 high, the watch is pretty chunky, but not so wide that it’ll feel out of place if you have a thinner wrist. The watch’s movement is COSC-certified meaning it’s certain to be more accurate than your driving line,
Special touches for this edition of 350 watches are pretty demure and cool, even if you’re not a loyal Hodinkee reader or shopper. The brand has leaned into its fanbase in Japan – something shared with Porsche – with a date display offered in both English and Japanese. There’s also a demure “H” at the 6 o’clock mark, rendered in the same red used on the first PD Chrono 1.
Naturally, the price for the Swiss-made chronograph isn’t for your average watch guy, in the same way not all of us can afford a 911. The Porsche Design Chronograph 1 Hodinkee 2024 Edition retails for $9,650 while they last.
