The Collaboration Between Rolex and Zenith to Produce Vintage Rolex Daytonas
Rolex Daytona ref. 16520 ‘Patrizzi’ / Credit: Amsterdam Vintage Watches
You may have already realized this but most watch companies did not make in-house movements until recently, Rolex being one of them. Rolex’s infamous Daytona, released in 1963, notably used a Valjoux 72 movement that was modified by the Swiss company. A classic manual winding column-wheel chronograph movement. However, as the times changed towards the end of the 1980s, Rolex upgraded to a self-winding movement – the El Primero.
The Zenith El Primero is arguably the first automatic chronograph movement, released in 1969. Arguably because, as we’ve mentioned, a lot of other things happened in the world of horology in 1969 – including other automatic chronograph movements. The first automatic Daytona was the ref. 16520 released in 1988. A number of other changes were also brought to the ref. 16520 including a sapphire crystal and an official 100m water resistance designation. Rolex took Zenith’s Caliber 400 and made upwards of 200 modifications to it, ending up with what they called the Caliber 4030. In particular, the hi-beat rate of the El Primero was brought back down to 28,800 bph. Another interesting aspect of the ‘Zenith Daytona’, for the real Rolex nerds, is the small differences in the dials from Mark I to Mark V, that can serve as visual identifiers of a Zenith-powered Daytona without opening up the caseback. Some of the dials were made by Jean Singer, the renowned Swiss dialmakers.
It was only in the year 2000 that Rolex released their own version of an automatic chronograph movement for the Daytona, the in-house made Caliber 4130. Interestingly, they actually started making automatic chronograph movements for their Tudor sub-brand in 1976, using the Valjoux Calibre 7750 in the Tudor Oysterdate ‘Big Block’.
For me this is a bit of a reflection on the importance of using an in-house movement, especially when considering many of the most important vintage watches we admire today used third-party movements. Fellow watch collectors, do we really care?
By: Andres Ibarguen