Chopard is to the Mille Miglia what Rolex is to the Daytona 24 Hours. They’re the official timekeeper of the legendary 1000-mile race which cuts through the Italian countryside, and they’ve also built quite a relationship with the Classic Car Club of Manhattan. This week CCC unveiled an exclusive Mille Miglia GTS Automatic that grants the owner a lifetime membership to the car club.
The watch itself is a standard Mille Miglia GTS Automatic, but comes with a second dial hand-painted and designed by CCC owner Mike Prichinello that can be swapped on at any Chopard boutique. What looks like an abstract red and white design is a subtly creative use of the Mille Miglia logo. Working with artist Evan Ortolani, Prichinello took the ten characters that make up the Mille Miglia logo, deconstructed them, magnified them, and cut out sections of lines that resembled corners on a race track.
Only ten of the CCC lifetime membership watches were made (one for each character in the Mille Miglia logo), each costing $10,000. But, if that sounds like a hefty premium over the regular $5,790 Mille Miglia GTS Automatic, consider what comes with it. For $180 per month, a conventional CCC membership grants you access to all of the cars in their fleet, the in-house restaurant, and bar, invites to exclusive social functions, and international trips. So you could be celebrating your two-year anniversary right around the time the watch starts paying for itself, which makes it a hell of a bargain for being such an exclusive timepiece. If you’re still on the fence about it, move quick, because as of this writing six of the ten already have owners.