To many people, the Cartier Replica Tank is the Platonic ideal of a dress watch. I have a personal soft spot for the iconic model as well — I fell in love with the watch’s quadrilateral design at a young age and it drove my watch obsession that continues to this day. While the long-established square design has never really changed, its presentation has varied a number of times. Here are three of the more atypical Cartier Tanks that have graced wrists over the past century-plus.

The Cartier Tank á Guichet

If you paid attention to 2017’s Phillips Winning Icons auction that featured Paul Newman’s record-breaking Rolex Daytona,replica rolex you may have noticed something curious about Lot 31. That 1931 Replica Cartier Tank á Guichet ended up selling for $131,250, but the real story behind the unorthodox design goes back three years earlier to 1928 when the watch was created with a jumping hour in response to a growing interest in timepieces with a numerical display. Unlike modern jumping hour and minute watches — think the A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk — the Tank á Guichet doesn’t even have a visible dial. Rather,orologi replica it featured a large expanse of metal with two tiny windows (guichets) that displayed the hour and minute. Cartier released multiple versions of the watch that often featured very different placement of the windows and crowns, sometimes the crown would be at 12 or 3 o’clock and the minute opening would be at 12 or 6 o’clock. These watches are exceedingly rare and someday I’d love to see a modern interpretation of this surprisingly masculine take on the Tank.

The Cartier Tank Asymétrique

While watches that are angled to this degree are common in both auto and aviation timepieces,rolex replika it’s extremely rare to see a dress watch with the feature. The idea behind the tilted dial is so the watch becomes more legible if your hand is on the wheel of a car or airplane. I’m still not sure what the value is on having the watch turned to this extent during a cocktail party or dinner, but maybe it had a specific purpose in mind when it was introduced in 1936. Regardless of its functionality, it’s a handsome timepiece that inverts the idea of a Tank on its head. The rotation of the dial ends up placing 6 and 12 o’clock in the corners, rolex replica and the overall sobriety of the Asymétrique serves as a departure from the decidedly avant-garde Tank á Guichet.

The Tank Must de Cartier

You may remember this watch from the late 1970’s when the Swiss timepiece industry was still in the throes of the Quartz Crisis.replika órák The Les Must de Cartier collection came at a time when popular opinion was highly critical of luxury goods. Cartier — being one of the world’s largest luxury Maisons — took this opportunity to release its first-ever line of quartz watches. They were an instant success and became recognizable around the world for having colorful lacquered dials with no numerals. The Must de fake Cartier helped reinvigorate the brand and introduced them to a much larger, aspirational clientele.