LIP MACH 2000 CHRONO
Colourful reminder of France’s pre-quartz heyday
FRANCE’S MOST cherished watch brand was once LIP. An innovator of early chronographs, the marque famously equipped the Latécoère 300 seaplane, known as the Croix du Sud, with a Type 10 on-board watch. It became the first of its kind to cross the South Atlantic Ocean in 1930, when it was piloted from Dakar in Senegal to Natal in Brazil by French aviator Jean Mermoz.
In 1934, LIP became the first company in France to offer paid holidays to its workers. The ultimate mark of patriotism, however, came in 1948 when General de Gaulle gave Winston Churchill his T-18 square-faced LIP watch as a thank you for helping to liberate France. The flag of flew high at LIP until the early ’70s, when the company faced bankruptcy because of the quartz crisis.
In 1973, there was a dramatic denouement when employees discovered that LIP’s directors planned to dismiss over a quarter of its workforce. In an act of mutiny, workers seized control of the factory, taking three administrators as hostages. The men were swiftly freed by riot police but the workers continued to occupy the manufacture for 57 days, seizing 65,000 watches, which they sold to make up for lost income.
LIP was then taken over by Claude Neuschwander, formerly of advertising giant Publicis, who pledged to honour the origins of the brand as a technical pioneer. Embracing the avant-garde, Neuschwander enlisted seven well-known creatives to work on a variety of attention-grabbing models. They included prolific industrial designer Roger Tallon, father of France’s high-speed TGV train and creator of the world’s first adjustable helicoid staircase. Tallon’s most notable contribution was the unorthodox LIP Mach 2000 (above), a chronograph with miniature ‘billiard ball’ pushers recalling the controls found in a TGV cab. This toy-like timepiece divided opinion as a somewhat wacky symbol of optimism designed to lift morale and reinstate a sense of daring.
LIP successfully resurfaced in the 1990s as a basic to mid-range watch manufacturer, and continues to sell a small number of quartz Mach 2000 re-issues on its website for just under €450. The original 1973 ‘marmite’ model remains an exciting talking point for collectors, especially given the fact that its quirky D-shaped case belies a sophisticated mechanical movement: the Valjoux 7734, another icon of the 1970s favoured by the likes of Breitling, Tudor and Tag Heuer at the time.