THE ESSENTIALS

MAKE: ZENITH
MODEL: 01.0040.400
YEAR: 1988
BOX/PAPERS: YES/YES
CASE DIAMETER: 40mm
CASE MATERIAL: STAINLESS STEEL
BRACELET MATERIAL: STAINLESS STEEL
MOVEMENT: AUTOMATIC

In 1988, an automatic chronograph was released, featuring a 40mm stainless steel case, powered by the Zenith El Primero cal. 400 movement, and a porcelain dial... No, we’re not talking about the floating porcelain dial Rolex Daytona ref. 16520. What we have here is the Zenith De Luca — the Daytona’s exact contemporary at the time (despite costing less than 10% of its price today).

The De Luca emerged at the dawn of Zenith’s El Primero resurgence in the 1980s, thanks to Mr. Charles Vermot’s courageous act of secretly preserving the detailed plans, specialised machines, and essential parts of the movement when Zenith’s American owners ordered the destruction of all tooling for mechanical movements a few years prior. The De Luca line is named after Manfredo De Luca, who was head of Zenith’s Italian operations at the time and played an instrumental role in pushing Zenith to create a more modern, sporty design.

Like the Daytona, the porcelain dial only exists in early examples of the Zenith De Luca. The panda dial on this example is perfect — the tritium lume has aged to a rich, creamy colour, and the black subdials have faded to a beautiful grey-brown tone. The case has been polished before but remains very strong, and the original bracelet shows only minor stretch.

The movement came to us in excellent health and is running beautifully at +4 s/d, 275 amps, with a 0.3 ms beat error. It comes complete with its original box and paperwork.