The Spirit Of Racing

Montblanc’s contemporary homage to the world of speed.

- Farhan Shah

What drives human ingenuity?

We landed a man on the moon because America wanted to one-up the former Soviet Union. Steve Jobs created the iPad because he was sick of hearing a Microsoft employee harping on about how the company was building a touchscreen device “so advanced that it would pave the way for computing”. It’s competition, plain and simple. And nowhere is this more evident than in the intertwined history of chronographs and motor racing.

Prior to being bought over by the Richemont Group in 2006, the Minerva manufacture was renowned for producing incredibly accurate timers and stopwatches. In 1916, it was one of the first in the world to produce a high-frequency movement that could measure 1/100th of a second. Its most famous creation, the Minerva Rally Timer, was used extensively in rally racing back in the day.