If you’ve been paying any attention to H. Moser & Cie. over the last few years, one thing should be abundantly clear — the Swiss watchmaker likes to keep things simple. While they may occasionally indulge themselves with an overwhelming quantity of dial text, or acquiesce to the need for a chronograph scale, Moser has increasingly adopted a minimalist approach in their watch design, with wide open expanses of dial and invisible logos taking center stage alongside hammered enamel finishes, minute repeater strikers, and elegantly finished hands. Today, Moser is throwing all that out, and, in partnership with Massena LAB, the brand is looking back to its history for what is, in many ways, its most traditional release in years.
The Endeavour Chronograph Compax would, from anyone else, barely qualify as newsworthy. After all, what brand hasn’t dipped back into the well to create a historically-minded steel sports watch in recent years? Moser hasn’t, and that’s what makes this collaboration so interesting. Even the Heritage model, the closest the brand has come to the format, isn’t so much a recreation as a reimagination, a consideration not of how to make an old watch feel new, but a thought exercise in what H. Moser & Cie. might have made were the modern brand to find themselves in a different era.
This new watch is not that. Though not a direct reproduction of any particular model, the new Endeavour Chronograph Compax is a genuine reflection on Moser’s history, specifically of chronographs produced by the brand in the 1940s. Primarily, this historical inspiration can be found on the dial, where, besides the overall layout, a handful of specific vintage details have been resurrected; namely a 1947 variant of the Moser logo with the brand name spelled out as “Hy. Moser & Cie” and a fully spelled out “Kilomètres à L’Heure” accompanying the multi-tracked tachymeter.
Of course, this being a modern Moser, it’s not all throwback. The dial color here is in Moser’s signature Funky Blue fumé with a sunburst finish, and the case is squarely 21st century both in size — 41mm across, 13.3mm thick — and in design and finishing, which matches what you would get with any other steel case in the Endeavour collection. The watch is powered by an HMC 220 automatic manufacture caliber, with the chronograph function coming from a Dubois Dépraz module, with the bi-compax layout showing small seconds and a 45-minute chronograph.
One exciting piece of this puzzle is that it represents the first time Moser, in its modern form, has put a chronograph in a non-Streamliner case. For that matter, it’s also the first non-flyback chronograph we’ve seen from them, at least to my knowledge. Seeing the result here, I can only hope that this watch will be the first in a line of more ‘conventional’ chronographs, but in the meantime, I’m glad to see it used here.
Being that the Endeavour Chronograph Compax is a collaboration with Massena LAB, it is highly limited with only 100 pieces produced. The watch is available on massenalab.com and through H. Moser & Cie’s website and boutiques for $27,600.
