The Bulova Accutron's legacy
I'm wearing the Bulova Accutron II today, which is kind of fitting since yesterday was the turn of the Mathey-Tissot MT369, and both brands shares a lot of common.
Like Mathey-Tissot, Bulova is a old brand with a prestigious past. They were the first brand to advertise on TV and at some point they were the owner of Universal Genève (The Lunar Pilot is in fact a homage to a UG prototype that was worn on the moon). Like Mathey-Tissot they fell hard during the quartz revolution and barely survived by selling cheap watches until they managed to revive a bit with the help of the Lunar Pilot and by digging into the catalogue of their older models.
Bulova looks much better than it did ten years ago, but somewhat diminished since it had to part with a large part of its legacy in order to enable Citizen, its parent company, to launch a new brand under the name of Accutron, which also forced them to divest themselves from their iconic tune fork logo.
Therefore my Accutron II is one of the last models bearing both the tune fork logo and the Accutron name under the umbrella of Bulova.
It could be worse, because my Accutron II was launched during a time period when a lot of Bulova's watches could be mistaken for the more gaudiest models from Invicta. It's still a large watch but at least it's styled like a relatively sober model from the mid to late 70's.
It's the last Accutron from Bulova and looking at the brand that now bear this name I'm not confident about the future of this name or even if we will ever see the tune fork back on a Bulova watch.
I'm a big fan of watches that are interesting because they are either unique, have interesting features, well designed or simply offer a great value for their price.
I kind of disagree that they were not looking great ten years ago. Citizen actually upped Bulova by introducing the 262kHz movement found in the Precisionist and Accutron II. In 2014 they had a really interesting and unique catalog, including the short lived Accu-Swiss line and the release of the 50th anniversary Accutron, which used the tuning fork technology from the classic models. If anything it was the late 90s to early 2000s that were not good years for Bulova. The tuning fork logo remains on both Bulova and Accutron watches. The current President of Bulova made it clear in an interview last year that they don't intend to drop it from the Bulova line.
I kind of disagree that they were not looking great ten years ago. Citizen actually upped Bulova by introducing the 262kHz movement found in the Precisionist and Accutron II. In 2014 they had a really interesting and unique catalog, including the short lived Accu-Swiss line and the release of the 50th anniversary Accutron, which used the tuning fork technology from the classic models. If anything it was the late 90s to early 2000s that were not good years for Bulova. The tuning fork logo remains on both Bulova and Accutron watches. The current President of Bulova made it clear in an interview last year that they don't intend to drop it from the Bulova line.
Lets agree to disagree because I don't think that the Precisionist models look very great IMO, and one of their latest attempt at originality, aka the CIRV, are hideous.
Lets agree to disagree because I don't think that the Precisionist models look very great IMO, and one of their latest attempt at originality, aka the CIRV, are hideous.
I understand the older Precisionist and the Curve, but the 96b158 Precisionist and the JetStar a massive improvement in appearance.
I understand the older Precisionist and the Curve, but the 96b158 Precisionist and the JetStar a massive improvement in appearance.
Which is why I referred to 10 years ago as I also think that their latest models that borrows heavily from their history are great watches.
I was a child in the 1960s and can still remember how excited people were when the tuning fork Accutrons came out.