Introducing Credor's Revival Of The Locomotive, A Long-Overlooked Gerald Genta Design (In-Depth, Live Pics)

Today, Credor is celebrating the brand's 50th anniversary by re-releasing the Credor Locomotive, a Gerald Genta design put into production by Credor (under the umbrella of Seiko) back in 1979. If you didn't know Seiko had an official Genta-designed watch (not to be confused with those that are distinctly Genta-inspired), you're probably not alone. But there's no mistaking the Locomotive for anything else.

There's no denying that the Credor Locomotive is a 1970s Gerald Genta "integrated bracelet" luxury sports watch with many of the hallmarks we've come to expect from the iconic designer (and his designs). The angular bracelet, bezel screws, and unconventional bezel and dial shape all scream '70s Genta. But where his influence on the Swiss industry is the stuff of legend, I'd guess that most people didn't know how important Seiko – and Japan in general – was to Genta. With that in mind, this won't be a traditional introduction, but that seems appropriate as there's nothing about Gerald Genta's designs (save for the Polerouter) that verges on traditional. You can skip to the end for the specifications, but for people who want to know more, I think digging into the history of the Locomotive is well worth the time.

Let's talk about that metal form first. While the original Locomotive was cased in steel, this new model is made in high-intensity titanium, measuring 38.8mm by 8.9mm, with a solid caseback, screw-down crown, and Sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating, with 100m of water resistance. The case itself has a mix of elements from the watches before it (similar, you might say, to the IWC Ingenieur). The bracelet is the most obvious "callback" – and you can't deny the similarities to the Royal Oak – with brushed surfaces, angled and polished edges, and two connectors between each link. Instead of being fully integrated into the case, the watch has a single central connecting point – something I'll return to later. The bracelet has a two-fold clasp with a push button release.

The dial has a hexagonal bezel mirrored by the hexagonal screws that hold it in place. The bezel is brushed on top, with polished sides, like the Royal Oak, but where the Royal Oak is very sharp and deliberate on each edge, the case shape of the Credor is more soft and rounded. The original Credor Locomotive had a dial texture that resembled hammering more than the radial pattern of Genta's original sketches. That's now been updated with new machining and manufacturing techniques that give over 1,600 radial lines. That, in addition to the bezel screws now being functional and the dial indices being full ovals, are among the few updates made in the 45 years since the original introduction of the Locomotive.

Inside the case is the new automatic Credor caliber CR01, with hours, minutes, seconds, and date, itself another upgrade from the quartz movement in the original. The watch runs at 28,880 vph and has 45 hours of power reserve. Unfortunately, the model I got to photograph was a dummy unit without movement, so I can't tell you anything about the feel or performance. The 2024 Credor Locomotive is limited to 300 numbered pieces and will sell for $12,000 when it's officially available for sale in August of this year. Those are the major details, but it barely scratches the surface of the story of the Credor Locomotive.

Credor, with a name from the French "Crête d'Or" – "pinnacle of gold" – was founded in 1974 as a high-end Seiko brand featuring products made from rare metals. By 1980, the brand had placed its tri-peak crest logo and Credor name on the dial for the first time without any Seiko branding, and two years later, it introduced a diamond-set jewelry watch with a price tag of over $1,000,000. In 2011, the brand even launched a Spring Drive Minute Repeater. But more importantly, throughout the history of Credor, you can see experimentation with handcrafts, gem-setting, designs, and shapes that would never have felt right in any of Seiko's other companies or collections. Credor also crosses price points dramatically.

What differentiates Grand Seiko and Credor actually has nothing to do with price. Whereas Seiko and Grand Seiko have some design and price point overlap, the biggest differentiating factor about Credor is that it is free from the confines of the three design principles and nine total design elements core to Grand Seiko and present on all of their watches. The brand has an overview of these principles on their website, but every Grand Seiko should have the following (quoted from their site):

1. Flat surfaces and two-dimensional curves. Three-dimensional curves are generally not utilized.
2. The flat surfaces of the case, dial, and hands should be as wide as possible.
3. Every surface should be distortion-free and have a mirror surface.

This diagram shows how all of these break down into nine design elements for Grand Seiko. But when you look at the Locomotive, you can also see how many of these design elements are wildly different from what Grand Seiko would demand in the modern landscape.

With that in mind, you can see the obvious ways the Locomotive diverges from what would be acceptable for Grand Seiko to make today. Everything from the rounded (not rectangular) indices and the lack of faceted hands to how the case takes on a three-dimensional curved shape from top to bottom and even from corner to corner. None of these hallmarks would fit a "Grand Seiko" design. Even the bezel itself, not mirror polished but vertically brushed, makes the watch distinctly Credor (or at least not a Grand Seiko).

It makes sense. Gerald Genta didn't follow anyone else's design rules. That's what makes his designs recognizable. But unlike a lot of apocryphal stories of Genta's designs – and there are a ton – this one came from the man himself.

Japan's role in supporting Swiss independent watchmaking over the last two decades has lifted people like Philippe Dufour and F.P. Journe to new heights they might not have seen (at least not so quickly) without Japanese support. But in the 1970s, the Swiss watch industry was at war with Japan, fighting for the soul of mechanical watchmaking following the county's growing talents for both mechanical and quartz-powered accuracy. 

"If you were a Swiss man starting your life in the watch world designing for a Swiss brand, Japan was actually definitely the place you should not have liked because every Swiss industry was petrified of Japan," Evelyne Genta told me. "It was the great enemy that was going to kill the Swiss watch industry. Factories were closing down; people were being laid off. And on the contrary, my husband had this obsession with Japan and kept coming, first really as a tourist."

At some point in his travels, Genta met Reijiro Hattori, a member of the founding family of Seiko and then-Executive Vice-President. Though Genta spoke neither Japanese nor English and Hattori didn't speak French, the two instantly bonded and formed a strong friendship. Hattori admired Genta's work and, over the years, invited Genta to Japan on many occasions in the 1970s to give inspirational talks to the Seiko design team. There, Genta, a passionate artist who was constantly painting in his spare time, encouraged the designers to look to nature for inspiration – a common theme in Grand Seiko these days – and to think less about the Swiss watch industry.

"He was Swiss. He did watches, but he said for him it was applied art," said Evelyne Genta about her husband. "He also had very thick blinders. It is very true that he never looked at other watches. We would get to the Basel Fair of all places and while I running around going to look at everybody's windows, I promise you that he never went and looked. I kept finding it unusual. But it was his thing."

Then, at the tail end of the 1970s, following a personal request from Hattori, Genta undertook the design of the Locomotive. While Genta would commonly design watches for brands for very little money, giving them to the brand and letting them do what they wished. Evelyne Genta said that she has 4,300 designs from her husband at home, so he had "many children," as she put it, and some he was happy to let go of easily. But there were others, watches like the Royal Oak, where Genta stayed more involved and saw the designs through to completion. 

The Locomotive was certainly one of the latter, and Evelyne Genta told me that he stayed involved through to the rollout of the watch. She also told me it was the only watch (outside the ones done for the Gerald Genta brand) that he named himself. The Locomotive's industrial-sounding name implies some sort of mechanical inspiration for both the design, but that's not quite true. While he did take inspiration from mechanical things he observed, minute details like screws or portholes that inspired designs, the name had more meaning than just a train.

"There are Genta designs in every single brand – in Corum, in Piaget. They're all looking for them in their archive at the moment because now it's become hugely popular to have a Genta design. What he did not like was when people started inventing stories about his involvement. There are some famous watches where the story is not real. But then you have this watch. He loved it. He always knew which ones were going to last very long. Sometimes, he would say, 'this is going to be a bestseller' or the 'locomotive' as we call it."

"In French, locomotive is, of course, the machine that we all know, but it also means 'something that pulls something successful,'" Mrs. Genta told me. "You're a photographer, and if one of your photos became incredibly famous, it would be the locomotive of your photos. We can't say that that watch is totally inspired by the machine. He made up the name afterward. 

It's something I find happens a lot with artists: a search for the exact representation of what is in your mind's eye. Genta was, first and foremost, an artist. Whether self-critical or self-searching, we'd continue to tweak and change our "art" forever if given the chance. When you look at the Locomotive in profile, it looks undeniably like a Royal Oak bracelet. But with a slight rotation, you notice a key design element I've seen carry through to Gerald Genta's designs under his own brand name or even the Cartier Pasha. That central mounting point, seen below, is something I'd consider a key element to Genta's "Octagon" watches, including the Grand Sonnerie and other complicated watches shown below.

It is possible that none of these designs likely exist without the Locomotive, but the full-fledged Gerald Genta brand (founded in 1969, ten years before its release) might not either. While Genta largely left the steel integrated bracelet sports watch designs behind after the Locomotive, he did so with some encouragement from Hattori.

"I think with the Locomotive, Gerald had said what he wanted to say with these more industrial-looking watches," said Mrs. Genta. "I think what he wanted after this was to explore complications. It is probably like Picasso, who at some point got liberated [with his style and the different media he used]. I think that's what happened to my husband. He wanted to make these perpetual calendars, which you might have seen with the very unusual sky and the sun. So he made six prototypes, not even finished, with no name on the dial. He showed them to Mr. Hattori, who told Gerald, 'Finish them and bring them back; I want to show them in Wako [the retailer in Tokyo].'"

"Gerald came back with the six watches. It was a major investment – six watches in gold – for somebody who didn't have that much money. Mr. Hattori showed them in Wako, and what was the response? One of the Swiss brands said to Mr. Hattori, 'You can't do that. Don't show these watches.' Mr. Hattori said, 'Mr. Genta, this is very disrespectful. You cannot accept that. You must put your own name on them."

That moment was, in Evelyne Genta's opinion, the true birth of everything that came under the Gerald Genta brand name.

As for the Credor Locomotive, it's hard not to be captivated by the story and the role the watch played in the history of Gerald Genta and the Credor brand. The watch certainly wears comfortable on the wrist – a bit thicker than a "Jumbo" Royal Oak or Patek Philippe's Nautilus, but at $12,000, it also comes in substantially more affordable. The dial is captivating and certainly more captivating than a Royal Oak or Nautilus (or even the rarer versions like the "Tuscan dials" from AP). But all that, in some ways, is probably slightly beside the point.

After talking to a few collectors, I've learned that, like any Genta design, there are certainly people who have been looking for Credor Locomotives for some time. Lovers of Japanese watchmaking are likely far more aware of Genta's history with Seiko and Credor than most. Vintage Locomotives do surface on the secondary market, but there are the same pitfalls as with any vintage watch in terms of condition and correctness. While it's not my favorite of Genta's designs, I'm a sucker for a good story. With only 300 new Locomotives being made, it's an easy way to secure a representation of everything Japan meant to Gerald Genta while having something new, durable, and packed full of history.

Brand: Credor
Model: Locomotive
Reference Number: GCCR999

Diameter: 38.8mm
Thickness: 8.9mm
Case Material: High-intensity titanium
Dial Color: Black, radially machined
Indexes: Applied
Lume: Yes
Water Resistance: 100m
Strap/Bracelet: High-intensity titanium with two-fold clasp with push button release

Caliber: Caliber CR01
Functions: Hours, minutes, central seconds, date
Power Reserve: 45 hours
Winding: Automatic
Frequency: 28,880 vibrations per hour
Jewels: 26 Jewels
Chronometer Certified: No; +15 to -10 seconds per day
Additional Details: Screw-down crown; Sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating

Price: $12,000
Availability: Available worldwide from August 2024
Limited Edition: Yes, limited to 300 pieces.

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