Scrabble the Seconds: A Timeline of the Cartier Tank
This is how the luxury house keeps its signature watch looking timeless, even 106 years after it hit the open market.
By Rhonda Riche
Editor-At-Large
The Tank from Cartier is one of the most recognizable timepieces. Even non-watch-savvy folk will describe any rectangular watch as a tank. That said, the Tank is anything but generic.
This legacy design has gone through many different iterations – that’s what keeps it so covetable after 106 years. And we’re sure Cartier will have even more surprises for fans at Watches and Wonders this year.
Of course, the rectilinear case shape and its two parallel brancards are the Tank’s signature. After that, the sky’s the limit.
Here’s a list of our top Tanks, presented in chronological order.
Tank Normale
Perhaps the most famous model in the French Maison’s watch division is the Tank Louis Cartier.
The Cartier Tank was conceived in 1917 by Louis Cartier, the founder’s grandson. It’s hard to imagine that such an elegant design was born amidst the devastation of WWI, but it did. Its architecture was inspired by the Renault FT-17, a French tank.
American General John Pershing received the Tank’s initial prototype from Cartier in 1918. The first Tanks became available to the open market in 1919. By the early 1920s, it was already a classic.
The watch was later renamed the Tank Louis Cartier, but the original Normale served as the template for all the Tanks that followed.
Tank Cintrée
Apart from the angles of the case, the Tank’s other big signature is its clean dial with Roman numerals and chemin de fer minute track.
Launched in 1921, the Tank Cintrée (from the French for “curved”) took the idea of the originally square-shaped Tank and adopted it for the curvature of the wrist. To accommodate this new shape, the numbers were likewise stretched and distorted.
Tank Chinoise
After WWI, the world became entranced by East Asian decorative arts and objects. Cartier, too, was taken in by the trend and introduced the Tank Chinoise in 1922.
The first examples featured square cases with two additional outer brancards positioned on the North and South sides of the case. This design was meant to evoke the arches of entry gates in East Asian temple architecture.
While the original Tank Chinoise had a short life, Cartier brought it back through its Privé Cartier Paris (CPCP) collection in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. The house is fond of delving into its archives and brought the case shape back for Watches and Wonders in 2022.
Tank Asymétrique
The angular case of the Tank Normale predated (and predicted) the Art Deco movement of the 1920s and ‘30s. In 1936, Cartier once again got ahead of the times with the slanted and enchanted Tank Asymétrique.
A bold departure from conventional watch designs, the Asymétrique featured an asymmetrical case, a diagonally orientated dial, and minimalist markers.
While it’s never been in constant production, it has been resurrected many times over the decades, the last revival being in 2020. Perhaps it’s time for a comeback.
Tank Américaine
Developed in 1989, the Tank Américaine has a similar elongated and curved silhouette as the Cintrée from the 1920s but with a more noticeably ergonomic curve.
Only precious metals were used to create earlier iterations of the Tank Américaine. That is until 2017 when we saw the introduction of stainless-steel variants into the series, created in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Cartier Tank.
Tank Française & Tank Anglaise
The Tank Française was launched in 1995 as a sport-chic alternative to the traditional Tank. The Tank Française features straight, sharp edges, providing a contemporary appearance. The brand also created a chain-link bracelet that resembled the caterpillar tracks of the Renault military tanks for this version.
Louis Cartier’s son Alfred had three sons, Pierre, Jacques, and Louis, who would all take the Maison to new international horizons. Louis stayed in Paris, Pierre set up shop in New York, and Jacques brought the brand to London.
Following the success of the Tank Française, Cartier paid tribute to the last location in the Cartier diaspora with the Tank Anglaise in 2012.
This collection made two significant changes to the traditional Tank structure. First, its case was chunkier and curvier than its predecessors. The second and most significant change was that Cartier replaced the traditional cabochon found in the crown of vintage Tank watches with a table-cut stone with a crown integrated within the bezel.
Tank Must
The Must de Cartier was initially conceived as an accessibly priced diffusion line to the more upscale accessories, jewelry, and watch collections in the 1970s and ‘80s.
To attract a younger, hipper audience, the Must de Cartier watches were cased in vermeil sterling instead of gold and came in an array of colorful dial designs. Some were Tank-shaped. Some were round. The first models were equipped with time-only mechanical movements, but to keep costs down, the brand soon switched to quartz calibres.
In spring 2021, the rectangular version of the Must de Cartier was once again resurrected as the Tank Must to attract a younger, hipper audience.