MB&F HM5 full review: back to the future
1970. The sky is not even the limit. Always faster, always stronger, always farther. Collectively, the Western world is still living in the myth of infinite growth; the energetic and ecologic barriers are not yet foreseeable.
Before the 1973 crisis, one dreamt about infinite, about intersidereal space, and that’s not only marketing!
During this period, cars were engineered like fighter jets, opposite to today’s “bobovans” with their babyish shapes and their sluggish engines… For example, Citroen develops its SM Maserati as a car able to drive from Paris to Marseille in less than five hours, at an average speed of 120Mph; as fast as a TGV. A few years earlier, a new car maker presented the Miura (fighter bulls from Seville). At this time, everything was still possible; a tractor maker could manufacture one of the first Supercars in history.
Thus, the whole noticeable production of the consumer society (that which we remember, the actual reality was much grimmer) was filled with science-fiction and space-opera influences, and carried a truly optimistic vision of the future.
It was the same for the watchmaking industry; the trend was quartz: why stick to inaccurate and unreliable watches which one had to wind every day!
“Quartz” also was associated with digital displays, which opened many new opportunities, sending the classic hand displays back to Grandpa’s dusty museum, together with marine chronometers and other sextants.
Every trend gives birth to its mechanical opposite! In the 70’s, Amida tries to launch the mechanical watch with digital display, with creations that reinterpret the science-fiction designs with which the brand wants to compete. Alas, technically as well as commercially the project cannot be completed and like the De Lorean, the attempt fails… But contrary to the De Lorean, this flop has not been enshrined by “Back to the future” and almost everybody forgot Amida. But not MB&F, which bought the rights to finish the job started in the 70’s.
The HM5 works on the same general concept: Namely the hour is displayed by two disks with reversed numerals (like the inscription on the hood of an ambulance) and whose image is perpendicularly sent to the eye trough a sapphire prism. Originally, this prism was made of Plexiglas, a material easier to machine but featuring poorer physical properties.
The Amida never worked properly, because of it being too complex. If the technical resources weren’t sufficient, it is also because the project was too ambitious; If MB&F eventually achieved the feat of developing this watch, it is of course because of the computer assisted design, of the modern materials, but most of all because they had plenty of time!
The development of the HM5 has been in the works since 2007, when MB&F was launched. If the project took so long to complete, it is because of the difficulties met during the development, which appeared to be simple at first sight but turned out to be very difficult.
This watch is especially interesting because, akin to a time travelling De Lorean, it features multiple temporal paradoxes. First of all, the shaped watches from the 70’s were a big source of inspiration for the new watchmaking, at the beginning of the years 2000 (or even at the end of the 90’s), especially for Urwerk and Hautlence. Yet, until the HM5, MB&F had never inspired itself from a watch from the 70’s (even though the brand draws from the pop’ culture of this period on a regular basis, for its general inspiration).
In terms of “time line”, it is namely a “Droste effect” applied to the new watchmaking: the watches from the years 2010 mirror those from the years 2000, which, in turn, mirrored the watches from the 70’s inspired from the pieces from the 18th century!
Thus, beneath a super-modern and futuristic look, the spirit of this watch is as old fashioned as a Lange & Söhne or a Jaquet-Droz, but of course in a less obvious way.
For that matter, it reminds us of the Zeitwerk, which tries to mimic the numerical display of quartz through a highly sophisticated mechanism. Here, the system is a bit simpler, despite the jumping-hour disk; but the display and the design of the HM5 are far more daring, more related to the “state-of-the-art” quartz watches from the 70’s
It could be summarized as Grandpa’s technology that thumbs its nose at Geek technology, it’s funny.
But above all, the essence of this watch is definitely 70’s, a period when cars still featured almost totally mechanical technology, encased in new designs which definitely assumed their futuristic nature.
Before talking about the design of this first series of 66 copies in itself, one has to mention that the external case is no more than a shell, because the watch contains a kind of sub-case, an internal “self-supporting hull” in some way, which implies that very different versions are yet to come; the display and the general shape will remain the same, but the materials and the design will probably undergo very profound changes.
I must say that I’m thrilled about the future evolutions of this piece, because today I tend to see more similarities with the HM4 (especially the case sides and the angle of the display) rather than let myself be captivated by the details inspired by the supercars from the 70’s. But finally, isn’t this feeling normal considering that the concepts of each of the four previous HM were extremely distinctive?
MB&F got us used to true revolutions with every new model, hence setting the standards and our expectations at a very high level. Are we witnessing the advent of a new rhythm of creation, in which Max and his Friends would consider that MB&F history is dense enough to present us with mere evolutions?
