Inside the Singer Drivers Club, and the Heritage V72 Chronograph on Singer Reimagined's Wrist

I'm battling 2009 Formula 1 world champion Jenson Button wheel-to-wheel in go-karts (spoiler: he won) before hot-lapping a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport at the newly upgraded Willow Springs International Raceway, 90 miles north of Downtown Los Angeles. The dream day continues with a catered lunch that has no business being so sophisticated this far out in the California desert, followed by a tour of extensively upgraded facilities and future structures which will include clubhouses with dining, gyms, and car storage.

Welcome to the newly christened worldbuilding exercise that is Singer Drivers Club. The members-only club is based at Willow Springs Raceway, which also maintains a calendar of public events. Singer is part of the new ownership group at Willow Springs, alongside CrossHarbor Capital Partners, the Boston-based private equity firm behind the Yellowstone Club in Montana. Singer Driver’s Club memberships start at $450,000 and are capped at roughly 400.

The Singer empire as we know it almost didn't happen. "I had no idea I was going to build cars," Founder Rob Dickinson  revealed to me once during a phone call. "When I founded the company it was going to be a design consultancy," he said. The former rock star's obsession was sparked when, as a kid, he caught a glimpse of an early Porsche 911 during a family vacation in France. He recalls a cascade of inspirations and opportunities that eventually led him to fetishistically modify once-unloved 911s into the Birkin bags**, or rather the** Paul Newman Rolex Daytonas, of the car collector world. After nearly two decades and over 700 intricately-built cars later, the rest is restomod history. 

Of course no niche luxury automotive brand would be complete without a watch element, and having been fortunate enough to test more than my share of Singer 911s over the years, it was finally time to delve into Singer's horological side. So I reached out to friend and Singer PR whisperer Deb Pollack for a wrist check, and oh what a rabbit hole she opened up.

Singer Reimagined's watch division began almost as casually as the car manufactory. Watch designer Marco Borraccino messaged Dickinson on LinkedIn simply to share admiration for his work. "We started exchanging messages and realized we had some very common passions and backgrounds," the former Officine Panerai design boss recalls. Before long, Borraccino was hired to establish Singer's watch division from scratch and develop the Track 1, a chronograph built around a movement developed in collaboration with Agenhor. Singer Reimagined launched as a Geneva-based watchmaker in 2017, following up the Agenhor collaboration with its own in-house movements for four families of watches: chronographs, timers, solo tempo, and dual-time. 

During a call with Borraccino and Pollack, the Italian was interrupted by the American. "Oh he's being humble," she interjected, calling out how the brand's debut timepiece earned the Chronograph Watch Prize at the vaunted Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève in 2018. "Rob wanted it to be a Singer and he wanted it to be exactly what our philosophy was," she added. "Borraccino shared his thoughts on how to create something that was different but appropriate, they had this little bond and they shook hands." She adds, "It was a sense of trust and two people who had a vision and an idea that could merge together." 

I've handled a few Singer timepieces in passing, but my formal introduction to the latest collection took place at Singer Vehicle Design headquarters near a multicolored sea of seven-figure cars being hand assembled at the spotless facility. Branded automotive timepieces often feel contrived, but Singer Reimagined's watches share unmistakable similarities with their automotive counterparts, among them a sense of carved-from-a-hunk-of-ingot solidity and thematically demarcated dial patterns which are like miniature analogs to the brand's jewelry-like tachometers.

The DualTrack incorporates a GMT function with a tiny recessed pusher on the 9 o'clock side of the case that rotates a 24-hour disc along the outer circumference of the dial. Graphical elements like numerals and of course the Singer logo are aesthetically aligned with the cars. Also consistent with the 911's lightweighting tactics are the cutouts in the corners of the 43mm stainless case, so-called openworked lugs which add a touch of airiness to the otherwise thick structure. The DualTrack is available in Horizon Red or Meridian Green, though in classic Singer style the hues can be custom-ordered to match your four-wheeled Singer. 

The flipside reveals a sapphire caseback displaying Singer's in-house movement, the manual wind Calibre 4 Dual Time. Internally dubbed ST5001, the movement was developed by Singer with the assistance of a La Chaux-de-Fonds-based engineering firm. Its 197 components feature a novel four-barrel mechanism designed to ensure a flat, stable energy curve for the duration of its six-day reserve. The movement is intrinsically pretty, with a quadrilaterally symmetrical layout that lends it an inherently balanced, architectural appearance. The barrels are coupled in a 2x2 linkage that meets in parallel through a finishing gear that powers the timepiece.

Each time I strapped it on my wrist I thought, "Boy is it a shame this movement is on the back side, not the front." Not that the front wasn't attractive in its own right, but the public-facing side's sandblasted anodized aluminum, brushed surfaces and glossy chequered parts simply can't compete with the rhodium-plated finery of those intricate little mechanical bits. I picked up the DualTrack just ahead of a week-long trip to Hawaii, which I thought would be an ideal opportunity to test it in the warm Pacific waters since it was wearing a Caoutchouc strap (which basically means natural rubber; don't worry, I had to look it up too.) The DualTrack wears bigger on my 6.75-inch wrist than expected given its 43mm case diameter; I think the upcoming 41mm might be better suited to my proportions. Since my loaner was a prototype I was discouraged from wearing it in the ocean. Fair enough. The DualTrack feels like it leans closer to the sporty than the luxury side, its chunky case with cutouts giving widebody DLS vibes more than the bogglingly posh interior details you'll find across the Singer lineup.

The DualTrack's positioning made sense during the duration of my loan, given that its stablemates include the more elegant Caballero, the Heritage which features a restored Valjoux 236 movement, and the deliciously bulky Divetrack. The real surprise and delight came when, by chance, I spent the following month in Puglia near where Marco Borraccino spends a large portion of the year living with his lovely wife, watch designer and creative director Marie Boutteçon, and their young child. The meetup started as convivially as you'd expect on a heady late afternoon at a country villa a stone's throw from the whitewashed medieval village of Ostuni.

A white Sicilian wine and an array of taralli, olives, and nuts were served as the sun slowly set on an unusually warm afternoon. A second wave of delights came when he emerged with a woven leather Singer place setting and a collection of timepieces, some of which would be announced within weeks. Among them was the stunning Heritage V72, which combines Singer's familiar design features on the dial with the piece de resistance tucked inside: a restored Valjoux 72 movement that has been sourced from a new old stock collection of components in kit form which were in deep storage in Switzerland. An ex-Patek Philippe master watchmaker assisted with the restoration. The venerable manual wind chronograph Valjoux 72 movement was produced between 1938 and 1974, famously powering early Rolex Cosmograph Daytonas and Heuer Carreras among others. Housed within Singer's classic 38.8mm case, the beautifully restored movement steals the show with its frosted bridge texture and its switch component finished in a striking atomic layer deposition in blue.

It's an addictive blend, this allure of the new intrigue of the old. The brand's winning combination has most certainly worked well enough for Singer Vehicle Design, proving itself as both a premier automotive restorer and a brand substantive enough to extend itself into the Singer Drivers Club. Singer Reimagined's timepieces achieve something arguably more difficult: distilling the concept into a miniaturized expression of the brand that fits onto your wrist, perhaps the most concentrated way of evoking the past while staying firmly planted in the present. As Borraccino so passionately says of his movements, which are always displayed through a crystal caseback, "The beauty of the movement is a big part of the appeal. You just cannot hide it; it wouldn't be acceptable."