Christopher Ward C70 DBR1/2 User guide
C70 DBR1/2 CHRONOMETER
ASTON MARTIN CENTENARY LIMITEd EdITION
O W N E R ’ S H A N D B O O K
Head Office
Christopher Ward (London) Limited,
1 Park Street, Maidenhead,
Berkshire SL6 1SL United Kingdom
+44 (0)1628 763040
custOmer services
UNITED KINGDOM: +44 (0)844 875 1515
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1.877.226.8224
Website
www.christopherward.co.uk
www.christopherward-usa.com
3
Your Christopher Ward watch has been
designed and engineered by highly talented
craftspeople to ensure not only accurate and
precise timekeeping but also to bring a real
pride of ownership that only luxury items of the
highest quality can ever hope to deliver.
You have made an investment, a good one,
and the aim of this handbook is to help you
make the most of that investment during what
I hope will be a lifetime of ownership.
Christopher Ward
TIME ON YOUR SIDE...
CONTENTS
THE ASTON MARTIN DBR1/2 4–7
THE DB YEARS 8–9
A PIECE OF HISTORY 10–11
C70 DBR1/2 CHRONOMETER
CENTENARY LIMITED EDITION 12–13
TECHNICAL INFORMATION 14–15
THE COSC CERTIFIED CHRONOMETER 16–17
HOW TO OPERATE YOUR C70 DBR1/2 20–33
THE CW360 WATCH CARE PROGRAMME 34
GENERAL INFORMATION 35
44
5
THE ASTON MARTIN DBR1/2
The Aston Martin DBR1/2 that won Le Mans
in 1959 is the most celebrated vehicle in
the British marque’s 100-year history.
The DBR1 sports racing cars were designed by
Ted Cutting, who had previously worked for
Allard, the British rm responsible for superb
cars with rounded, sweeping lines. He excelled
himself with the DBR1.
Building started in 1956 and only ve were ever
made, being given the designations DBR1/1,
DBR1/2 and so on. Fitted with a 3-litre engine,
of these ve, chassis number two, DBR1/2, was
to prove the king of the quintet. It was driven
to victory in the 1957 Spa Sports Car race by
Tony Brooks, and to top spots at both the 1958
and 1959 RAC Tourist Trophy at Goodwood by
Stirling Moss.
The second victory at the Sussex circuit was one
of Moss’s greatest triumphs and helped Aston
Martin win the World Sports Car Championship.
But the win at Le Mans in 1959, where Aston
Martin had come second in 1955 and 1956,
was the pinnacle of DBR1/2’s achievements.
On June 21–22 1959 it took three cars, six drivers
and more than 2,700 miles for Aston Martin
to defeat the works Ferraris and Porsches, its
nearest rivals, to claim its rst and only victory
in the Le Mans 24-hour race. The chequered
ag was waved as DBR1/2, bearing black
racing number 5s upon white circles, crossed
the line with Texan Carroll Shelby at the wheel.
Six miles behind it was DBR1/4, carrying racing
number 6 and helmed by French veteran
Maurice Trintignant.
When DBR1/4 crossed the line it secured a
marvellous 1–2 for David Brown, the charismatic
owner of Aston Martin, whose initials have
become ever associated with a series of
legendary British cars, the initials DBR standing
for David Brown Racing.
Watching from the pits were Shelby’s British
co-driver Roy Salvadori, Trintignant’s Belgian
partner Paul Frère, and the British pair Stirling
Moss and Jack Fairman, whose DBR1/3, racing
as number 4, had set a blistering pace in the
early section of the 24-hour race that proved
to be the ruin of the continental thoroughbreds
from Italy and Germany. By the end of this
classic endurance pursuit Salvadori and Shelby
had covered 2,701.654 miles (4346.961km) at
an average speed of 112.569mph (181.124kph).
A legend had been conrmed.
5
6
Earlier this year, Stirling Moss shared some of his
memories with AM, the Aston Martin Magazine.
“Le Mans was never a circuit I particularly liked
as the cars weren’t generally reliable enough in
my day, so you had to nurse them round there
rather than really go for it, which was my style.
[In 1959] they tted my car with a special more
powerful engine and [I was told] to go out and
drive very fast, which was music to my ears, to
see if we could tempt Ferrari into a high-speed
duel. I was driving with Jack Fairman and the
plan worked perfectly as Ferrari did exactly
what we hoped. They tried to chase us down
and burnt themselves out in doing so. Three
of their cars were forced to retire with engine
problems, which allowed the other two Aston
Martins to nish rst and second. The DBR1 was
a great car to drive…as it handled beautifully
– you could really throw it around, which is how
I wanted to drive. The brakes were great and
the car had lovely balance. It also looked very
classy and I always preferred to drive a British
car if I could.”
The success of the legendary DBR1s is all
the more remarkable because, compared
to their bitter rivals, the Ferraris, they were
underpowered and had a very unreliable
gearbox. It had a habit of either jamming or
jumping out of gear, which must have been a
disconcerting thought in the driver’s mind at
160mph on the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans.
In 1959 53 cars started the endurance classic,
including 11 works and privately-entered
Ferraris, which were generally accepted to
be better cars.
After securing the World Championship in 1959,
David Brown retired Aston Martin from racing.
Over the past 50-plus years, however, DBR1/2
has not been a motionless cocooned museum
piece. Owned by people that cared about it
and knew how to look after it, this iconic wire
wheeled gem has been raced regularly at
vintage meetings and scrupulously maintained.
“The DBR1 was a great car to drive…
as it handled beautifully – you
could really throw it around, which
is how I wanted to drive. The brakes
were great and the car had lovely
balance. It also looked very classy
and I always preferred to drive a
British car if I could.”
STIRLING MOSS
7
Top L–R: The opening stages
of the Le Mans 24-hour,
France, 20 June 1959.
Middle: Carroll Shelby
steers the Aston Martin
DBR1/2 number 5 car
during the race.
Bottom L–R: The chequered
flag is waved for Carroll
Shelby who crosses the
finish line driving DBR1/2.
Shelby and co-driver
Roy Salvadori averaged
122.569 miles per hour
including all stops in the
24-hour. Only 13 of 53
starters finished the race.
Roy Salvadori (left), David
Brown holding a bottle
of Champagne (centre)
and Stirling Moss (right) sit
above Carroll Shelby
in the winning DBR1/2 car.
Opposite page: British racing
driver Stirling Moss at the
wheel of the 3-litre Aston
Martin during the opening
stages of the Le Mans
24 hour race, June 20, 1959.
7
8
“At the end of the race David Brown got
in the car for the victory lap. It meant so
much to him; I guess he had wanted to
win Le Mans all of his life. When he knew
we were going to win, he’d dressed up in
all of his nery with a new sports coat and
everything. But after he got into the car
at the end, he sat in about an inch of oil!
I felt quite sorry for him, all dressed up
like that and covered in oil! But I guess
that under the circumstances he didn’t
mind too much...” CARROLL SHELBY
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9
THE DB YEARS
Celebrating 100 years this year, Aston
Martin started life as Bamford & Martin, a
company incorporated on 15 June 1913.
Based at 12–16 Henniker Place, Chelsea, it was
a partnership between Robert Bamford and
Lionel Martin, who had met through an interest
in cycling. Having started working as a motor
repair business, they took on a dealership and
concentrated on modifying Singer production
cars to achieve improved performances.
The partnership was dissolved in 1920 when
Bamford left. Martin added “Aston” after
the Aston Hill climb near Aylesbury where he
competed with Singers and by the early 1920s
Aston Martin was a recognised designation for
the cars he developed. In 1926 the company
failed, Martin left and new investors revived it
under the name of Aston Martin Motors.
David Brown came on the scene in 1947 when
he saw an advertisement for “high-class motor
business” in The Times. His family’s Hudderseld
based engineering business made gears and
tractors and Aston Martin was bought by the
David Brown Corporation for £20,500 in 1947.
In 1948, the British luxury car company Lagonda
was added to the stable for £52,500 and Aston
Martin Lagonda was created. As he did not
own the company personally, during the 25
years or so he ran the business, Brown’s wish to
spend money on the cars often was thwarted
by the nance department in Yorkshire.
Born in 1904, Brown was physically a small man
with something of a Napoleon complex.
He was an adventurous soul who owned
racehorses, held a pilot’s licence, played polo
and raced cars and motorcycles. A conrmed
ladies’ man, he was married three times, the
last wife being 48 years his junior. Knighted in
1968, he died in tax exile in Monaco in 1993
aged 89.
After Brown bought Aston Martin he insisted
that his initials should prex the model
designation of the cars. Although in 1931 an
Aston Martin was the rst British car to complete
the Le Mans 24-hour race, the DB years, which
lasted until the mid-1970s when the struggling
business was sold, are recognised as the nest
period for the marque. Ironically, even when
he owned the company, Brown used a Jaguar
XJ Series 1 as his own car.
Above: David Brown with Queen Elizabeth ll
during her visit to the Aston Martin Lagonda factory
in Buckinghamshire, 1966.
Left: David Brown (left) with Carroll Shelby (right)
after their historic 1959 Le Mans win.
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A few years ago historian Christopher Bennett
acquired from DBR1/2’s previous long-term
owner some fragile aluminium panel sections
that had been removed from the car during
restoration activities, one of these panels being
a slender bulkhead section located behind
the driver’s head, this section a distinctive
feature of the curvaceous lines of the Aston.
Bennett’s London-based business, TMB ArtMetal,
scrupulously salvages original metals from very
rare historic cars and aircraft and recycles
it into unique collectible artefacts, such as
cufinks made from the remnants of a famous
1940 Battle of Britain Hurricane ghter. When
he approached Christopher Ward Watches
with an idea for a collaboration, the motor
racing fanatics at CW’s Maidenhead HQ took
little persuading.
“As our rst-ever watch, the C3 Malvern, was
inspired by the dial from a classic Aston Martin,
we were fascinated by Chris’s proposition,” says
CW co-founder Mike France. “We were looking
to create a special limited-edition to mark the
Aston Martin centenary this year and what
could be better than an actual fragment of the
marque’s most famous and successful racer?”
A PIECE OF HISTORY
Bennett explains: “During a meticulous
restoration in the early 1990s by renowned
engineer Tim Samways a small number of
damaged or age-distressed original body panel
sections were removed from DBR1/2, and it is
from one of these very panels that the pieces in
the Christopher Ward chronometer are derived.
These venerable old panels display the correct
and expected age patina appropriate to
metal from the late 1950s, with a hard working
life behind them.”
Johannes Jahnke, a committed car enthusiast
himself, carefully prepared the historic metal
to allow us to incorporate a medallion into
the back-plate of each of the 100 pieces of
the special limited edition. The design of the
medallion, with another touch of authenticity,
includes a perfect facsimile of the cars number
5 and it is has been covered by a sapphire
crystal for posterity.
Below: The aluminium strip from the
winning car which has been used for
the new C70 DBR1/2 Limited Edition
watch was located at the rear of the
car's cockpit, just behind the head of
the driver. The car, minus this piece,
was recently sold to a private buyer
for a reported £20 million.
10
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