BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
Last year we covered Zenith’s Extreme E watches. Extreme E is the newest kid on the block in terms of off-road racing, featuring purely electric cars flying through some of the world’s most rugged, and most beautiful, terrain. This year sees the third season of Extreme E racing, with the most recent events taking place in Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland.
The theme of this race is Hydro x Prix, previously we’ve seen themes like Island x Prix and Energy x Prix. The theme of this watch comes from its location in a former coal mine Glenmuckloch, which will soon become a Pumped Storage Hydropower station and wind farm. Extreme E has always been about promoting the environment alongside having some jolly good fun in extremely fast electric cars. Scotland’s wild and untamed environment makes it the perfect challenge for racing drivers.
Zenith’s latest Defy Extreme E watch is the lightest yet. Despite having a 45mm diameter case, it’s made from carbon fibre and weighs just 96 grams including its strap. Light green is the theme of this watch, and that can be seen on all the straps supplied with the watch, as well as around the timepiece itself. The most obvious parts are the rings around the subdials, but I struggle to see any other obvious injections of colour. It’s a little more subdued than the wild purple edition from last year (insert hyperlink), but the case makes up for that I suppose.
Inside the case is Zenith’s El Primero 9004 self-winding calibre, which runs at a moderate 5Hz for around 50 hours. Start the chronograph, and a second movement springs to life (sorry for the bad pun). The chronograph is running at 50Hz and can time down to 1/100th of a second. Thankfully, Zenith remembered to include a power reserve for that chronograph, and you can see some of it through the dial which is a piece of sapphire crystal offering a view to the back.
This latest watch comes with multiple straps, including black and green rubber and also Velcro, for a price of $30,100, Zenith will make 100 of these instead of the 20 we got of each edition last year, and they’ll come in a crush and water resistant case.
