It is not common to see an Enicar with a white dial for some reason the brand favored black dials in pretty much every watch they made. It is always great to see a brand's design ethos shine through in an accessible, time-only watch. Collectors have referred to these style lugs as "turtle" lugs because if you imagine the crown is the turtle's head, the lugs look like turtle arms. That being said, classic Enicar features like the EPSA made waterproof case with "bayonet" style caseback as well as the unique lug shape are retained. Solely branded as Ultrasonic, this watch would have sat next to the Sherpas in the Enicar catalog as a more every day-leaning option. Here we have a simple Enicar compared to the others we see in the vintage market, especially under the Sherpa family. Enicar claimed that its process preserved movement oils for longer, bragging that its movements could go three years without servicing. The brand began using this process in 1953 and saw it as a differentiating element of its manufacturing abilities within the crowded Swiss watch market. "Ultrasonic" in "Enicar-ese" refers to an ultrasonic cleaning during assembly. These were selling points, utilizing the watch dial as an advertising tool in and of itself. Not the jewel count of the movement or simply "automatic" but words like "supertest" and "incabloc" found their way right on to the dial.
The series represented the pinnacle of the firm's popularity, with numerous well-known models, including a chronograph (Sherpa Graph), a dive watch (Sherpa Dive), and a GMT (Sherpa Jet) as well as a few others.įound on many of the various Sherpa dials is the word "ultrasonic." Watch brands began to place selling points of their watches directly on the dial around the mid-20th century. The vintage brand's most famous line of watches is the Sherpa series, which put the company on the map. The brand was purchased and revived by another company and is still around today, but it's not the same Enicar S.A. Enicar operated through the golden age, at least in the mind of a vintage collector, of swiss watchmaking but went through financial troubles in the 1970s due to the Quartz Revolution, ultimately going out of business in 1987.
The Full StoryĪriste Racine founded Enicar, by reversing the spalling of his last name, in Switzerland in 1914. Why This Watch Matters This Enicar offers a great everyday wear look with a textured white dial while retaining those "turtle" style lugs that collectors love from the brand.