Beautiful two-tone ball & replica watch comparison with Constant chronographs

Elegant chronographs belong to a very special category of watches that combine sportiness with nobility. Think of them as mortal Riva speedboats. Chronographs are particularly handsome when their counters are located at 3 and 9, a symmetrical arrangement known as “bicompax”. If the chronographs also have no date display, as our three test watches do, then they offer the best preconditions for creating pure and convincing style.
Of the three replica watches we tested, Frédérique Constant’s Vintage Rally Healey Chronograph takes the sportiest route. It is a car-inspired watch with a perforated leather racing strap in collaboration with former sports car manufacturer Austin-Healey. large numerals of 12 and 6 as well as applied and luminous indicators create a dynamic effect. This is the only one of our three test watches that shows the time in the dark. And this is by no means the only interesting detail on the dial of this model. The Bordeaux red distinguishes between the minute circle, the elapsed seconds and two small hands for the elapsed minutes and the continuously running seconds. The subdials and the rings for elapsed seconds and fractions of a second are printed in dark gray, while all the numerals and indexes are in light gray. Our other two candidates take a simpler approach.
The Vintage Rally’s strap is beautifully crafted in a beautiful grayish brown color with contrasting colored stitching in addition to neatly perforated holes. The clasp and its pins are stamped, not milled. Both the clasp and the case are completely polished. The copy watch remains faithful to the characteristic Frédérique Constant style with its rounded shape. The large knurled surface above the mushroom-shaped pushers ensures a good grip and reduces the force required to trigger the pushers.
The Sellita Caliber SW500 movement, which Frédérique Constant has modified to support the twin star arrangement on the dial, can be seen through the sapphire back. The movement is completely undecorated, except for the gold-plated rotor with Côtes de Genève, which even shows tiny scratches and marks left by machining. Apart from its fine-tuning, the SW500 movement is almost identical to ETA’s Valjoux 7750.
With a loss of 0.5 seconds per day, the average deviation of this movement remains satisfactorily low. However, the rate values vary too much from position to position, with a maximum loss of 6 seconds and a maximum gain of 6 seconds. Each Vintage Rally Healey chronograph comes in a gift box with a model of the 1953 Austin-Healey 100 racing version. the Vintage Rally Healey chronograph is reasonably priced ($2795), but the lack of decoration on the movement is a bit disappointing.