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New Movement Family: Zenith Elite

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This weekend I added a Zenith’s Elite family of movements to the site. These are an important series of modern automatic movements yet are not well-understood or documented. Introduced in 1994, the Elite series gave Zenith a compact movement that was robust, reliable, and could support complications across a wide range of watches. The series was almost retired in 2015 but has been given a new lease on life and is today one of two main movement lines from Zenith, along with the famous El Primero chronograph.

Jump right to the Zenith Elite family here on Grail Watch Reference or stick around for the back-story

Zenith introduced the Elite movement family in 1994

Zenith’s Bread and Butter Movement

Zenith used this illustration for the launch of Cal. 691 in 2011

Mention Zenith to a watch enthusiast and they’ll likely start talking about the famous high-beat automatic chronograph known as El Primero. And for good reason: Not only is it historic, it’s also got a fun survival story and is a great movement to boot. But a company can’t rely on a single movement for all of its sales, especially a complex and expensive one.

In 1991, the Swiss watch industry was finding its way out of the quartz crisis, with complicated automatic movements leading the charge. IWC and ETA were showing what could be accomplished by layering a module on top of a reliable base, and every manufacturer was scrambling to secure such a movement. Zenith technical director Jean-Pierre Gerber lead a team to create a design of their own. It would be a relatively small and thin automatic movement with specifications similar to ETA’s leading Cal. 2892-2. The company was using computer-aided design (CAD) technology for the first time, and reportedly brought in help from consulting company Conseilray.

The resulting Zenith Elite movement would prove to be an excellent all-around performer. It was thoroughly up to date, with modern features including hacking seconds, instant date change, and a ball bearing rotor. The Glucydur balance ticked 28,800 times per hour but the design was efficient enough to run for over 50 hours from a single mainspring barrel. It measured just 11.5 ligne (25.60 mm) diameter and 3.28 mm thick, making it even slimmer than the similar ETA 2892.

At a time when subdial “small seconds” were seen as old-fashioned, Zenith designed this into Elite movement. Stranger still was the location of this subdial: 9:00 on the dial. Perhaps this was to add interest and a feeling of complexity to the watches that used the new Cal. 680, but it remains an odd choice. Zenith also offered a similar movement, Cal. 670, with central seconds, but this never seemed to be the focus. The small seconds movements were much more prominent in the Elite range, and far more varieties were produced.

Zenith Elite Cal. 680

Early variations on the Elite included the hand-winding Cal. 650, two-handed Cal. 661, and models with a fan-shaped power reserve indicator between 1 and 2 on the dial. A popular complication was a central 24 hour hand adjusted using a simple pushbutton at 10:00 on the case. These complications would appear in various combinations with date and moon phase for 25 years. Perhaps the most unusual member of the family is Cal. 689, which moves the small seconds subdial to the traditional location of 6:00 on the dial. This gave it a look entirely unlike the rest of the Elite series.

Early in the 2010s, Zenith recognized that the diminutive Elite movement wasn’t a good match for the ever-larger cases preferred by modern buyers. The company set about designing a new larger movement, likely intending to slot it above the Elite as a basis for future complicated models. The result was Cal. 6150, shown in late 2014 but officially launched in 2015. This double-barrel movement boasted 100 hours power reserve and a generous diameter of 30 mm, and Zenith’s new CEO Aldo Magada suggested it would see widespread use.

Outgoing CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour had radically reduced the number of models offered by Zenith and directed the company to switch to cheaper Sellita SW300 movements for low-end models. This would have pushed the new Elite movement up-market at the expense of some of the hard-won respect the brand had earned from enthusiasts. But a funny thing happened over the next few years: Although a few models (notably the Pilot Type 20) did use Sellita movements, that plan was cancelled by the new CEO. In the mean time, the old Elite just soldiered on as the promised 6150 family never developed past that first movement.

Zenith Cal. 670, pictured in a 1996 press photo, remains in production after over 25 years

As of 2020, Cal. 6150 no longer appears in the Zenith catalog. But five variations on the little #lite, including the original Calibres 670 and 680 remain in production! Indeed, when Zenith began experimenting with silicon escapement components in 2018, they turned to the original Elite Cal. 670 as a base. Today’s Elite Cal. 670 SK is found in the brand’s leading models, including the skeletonized Defy.

In 1994, Zenith’s model range was defined by two movements: The Elite and El Primero. That the same is true in 2020 is quite remarkable indeed!

Research Notes

I was able to catalog 23 different Elite movements based on the original 1994 design, and I believe that this list is comprehensive. It was surprising that there is no other such list on the internet, and I believe that this site might just be the most comprehensive resource for the Zenith Elite movement family anywhere!

It was extremely hard to locate solid information on these movements, and I rely primarily on two sources of information:

  • Archived copies of the Zenith-Watches website dating from 2001 to present
  • A trove of Zenith press releases from 2003 through 2008
  • A full-line Zenith catalog from 2011
  • Contemporary coverage in Europa Star, WatchTime, and QP Magazine

I did not use sources like WatchBase, Ranfft, or Caliber Corner at all, since I found their information quite lacking and often incorrect. The same is true of popular forums, where many posters are confused about which movement is which and what the specs are. I found this odd, since most online enthusiast communities have decent information about many brands, but perhaps Zenith devotees aren’t as focused on the movements as others.

In fact, it was this conflicting and confusing situation that drove me to research this movement family. I could not believe that there was no other resource, given the universal acclaim Zenith has received for the Elite family.

All specifications listed in the movement pages here at Grail Watch Reference are based on manufacturer information. This is especially important since some important elements are inconsistent across sources, including the thickness of the base movement (is it 3.28, 3.47, or 3.88 mm?) and jewel count (does Cal. 690 really have 37 jewels?) When in doubt I chose not to include a spec rather than to include something dubious.

It was also difficult to trace the timeline of these movements. I compiled a list of the first mention of each movement in a contemporary source or on the website as a start, also researching the first appearance of the watch which used it. Happily Zenith encodes the movement number in the watch reference number, making this task quite a lot easier. Still, it is possible that some of my dates are too “late” if I missed an earlier use. But overall they should be quite reliable.

New Research: Sellita History

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I did a little research over the weekend into one of the top movement producers in Switzerland, Sellita. It can be difficult to find details on under-the-radar companies like Sellita – they didn’t exhibit at industry fairs and “have no particular need to advertise,” according to a 2014 Europa Star article. They just quietly built over a million watch movements per year, leveraging a network of subsidiaries and suppliers in Switzerland, Germany, and elsewhere.

Visit the following pages to explore this new information:

* Sellita SW200 Family

* Sellita SW300 Family

Update: I did a little more research over the weekend and uncovered a few more interesting facts: Sellita’s ETA 2893-2 clone, Cal. SW330-1, first appears in March, 2015, a full 7 years after their 2892A2 clone, Cal. SW300-1, appeared. Read more about my Sellita SW300 research!

Here’s a shot of the Sellita website from 2004! Gotta love that style, and also the decorated 2892 movement

A History of Sellita

Sellita was founded in 1950 as an etablisseur (assembler) of watch movements and components. In the 1980s, they found a niche assisting companies like ETA in watch movement assembly. It is said that they were producing more ETA movements than the parent company!

This image shows a Sellita-produced 2824-2 from 2004. Note the ETA logo stamped into the main plate, and the fact that it still has 25 jewels, rather than the 26 in Sellita’s SW200 clone.

In 1990, ETA announced that they would stop using third-party manufacturers like Sellita, so the company began simply assembling and finishing movement kits for other brands. In 2002, ETA warned that they would begin restricting availability of components, a move that would be catastrophic for Sellita. Founder Pierre Grandjean decided to sell the business.

New owner Miguel Garcia had a different plan, one that would re-establish Sellita as one of the top movement manufacturers in Switzerland. Nicolas Hayek, CEO of Swatch Group, suggested that third parties like Sellita could produce their own clones of the ETA 2824 and other movements, since the patents had just run out. Because they already had decades of experience manufacturing these movements, Sellita was uniquely positioned to take up the challenge. They were able to produce nearly every part, though the assortment (escapement, balance, and hairspring) would still be sourced from Swatch’s Nivarox.

Soon, Sellita would launch their own ETA 2824-2 clone, the SW200 family, and rise again to prominence. These movements were in production by 2008, along with Cal. SW300, a clone of ETA’s 2892A2. In 2009, a Valjoux 7750 clone, Cal. SW500, was also released. Sellita expanded the range in 2014 with the SW1000, a compact calibre of their own design. Today, the company produces well over a million movements per year and stands as the primary supplier for dozens of respected companies. They still rely on Nivarox assortments, however, posing serious challenges going forward.

Read more: An Exclusive Peek Inside The Sellita Manufacture! (From The Archives)

This promotional image was widely seen when Sellita introduced the SW300 family in 2008

Research Notes

Although Sellita has been in business since 1950, the period I was most interested in was 2002-2010, when the company launched their SW200, SW300, and SW500 movement families. This nicely coincides with the Archive.org website collection range, which captures most websites since 2000. My typical process is to begin at the earliest archive image and “walk” forward monthly, recording changes to identify movement introduction dates.

Sellita added a catalog of movements to their site in 2004, so this was my start. That page shows only Sellita-constructed or finished versions of ETA movements until the site was redesigned in 2008. This includes Cal. 7001, Cal. 2660, 2671, 2678, and 2681, Cal. 2801-2, 2804-2, 2824-2, 2834-2, and 2836-2, and Cal. 2892-2 and 2893-2. It certainly appears that the company was focused on these movements throughout this period. This was a surprise, since many sources claim that Sellita announced their own SW200 family as early as 2002 and began production in 2004.

My next attempt to establish a date of introduction for the SW200 series was to look for contemporary news reports. I searched my own collection of watch magazines (QP, WatchTime, Europa Star) and the earliest mention of the Sellita SW200 series was 2008. I then searched Google, constraining the search by date, and the earliest mention I found was a November, 2007 article in A Blog to Watch with the strange title, “Sellita Movement Makers: A Little Bit of China In Switzerland“. I find this strange because there is no evidence that Sellita sources components from China, despite Ariel Adams’ headline.

This photo shows a Sellita SW200 in 2008

Therefore, I find it safe to say that the Sellita SW200 family was not in production (or at least named) until 2007. It is possible that the company slowly transitioned from ETA components to their own parts before this date, but “SW200” as a separate movement line did not exist. And since the hallmark of Cal. SW200 is an extra jewel over ETA’s 2824, one would thing it would be notable if it was “in the wild” before this.

Then there is the question of the “dash-1” variant of Sellita’s movements. A Sellita technical document dated August 19, 2008 shows that the company changed the tooth profile of three gears to make them more robust. This was clearly noted in the press, and Sellita’s own website shows Cal. SW200-1, SW220-1, and SW240-1 listed in Dec. 2008. The non “dash-1” versions could not have been sold for very long!

Cal. SW300 is a clone of the thin ETA 2892A2

It is also interesting that the SW300 series was already listed in December 2008, since these have often been suggested to be later additions to the line. Clearly Sellita’s 2892A2 clone was available throughout the 2010s. Cal. SW260-1 first appears in 2011, with a gap in the Archive until 2014, when calibres SW221-1 and SW290-1 are listed. 2015 is the first appearance of the SW400 family, as well as calibres SW210-1 and SW215-1 (both of which lack the “M” in the name seen later).

Cal. SW500 is a clone of the popular Valjoux/ETA 7750 chronograph

Research Continues!

The next big change comes in 2019, when the site is again redesigned and an explosion of movement variations appears. Today Sellita’s site lists hundreds of different variations across 11 different movement families! Although these are now well documented, it poses a challenge for me as I update the website! Watch for more Sellita updates in the months ahead.