Gentlemen, start your engines

The city is packed with travelling exhibitions this month. A rather grand one watch buffs shouldn’t miss is Rolex’s Daytona exhibition, which will be at Central Embassy until Sunday. Rolex rarely hosts events and this is probably the only one they will host this year, so hop to it if you’re a fan. Encased in what looks like a giant Rolex bracelet, the exhibition arrives in Bangkok for the very first time to display the watch that was born to race: the Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona.

A series of panels and interactive displays retraces the birth and evolution of a watch that was named after Florida’s Daytona Beach — a site of hard-packed sand that stretches over 35km lengthwise, made for the purpose of motor racing. As an exceptional natural raceway, it is known by motorists and racers the world over as the capital of speed, with 14 world land speed records set there, between 1903 and 1935. Racing on the beach persisted until the 50s before the Daytona International Speedway opened in 1959.

Soon enough, Rolex’s Cosmograph Daytona was born in 1963 and became linked to this racing ground for its excellent legibility of functions, which moved onto the bezel, a sporty appearance and high precision in measuring time and speed on the racing track.

Eventually becoming a winner’s trophy by the mid 1960s, today the race is known as Rolex 24 At Daytona, an annual sports car endurance race that spans across a gruelling 24 hours.

With over 50 years of history, the Cosmograph Daytona has gone through several evolutions, but none as striking as when the redesigned and self-winding model was introduced in 1988. It has remained the defining trait since, although the brand’s innovations to set new standards in terms of robustness, reliability and precision are never ending. At the exhibition, visitors can admire the new model in 904L steel that’s fitted with a monobloc Cerachrom bezel in black ceramic — an example of embracing the model’s unique heritage, yet also looking extremely modern at the same time.