Mechanical democracy

It may be comfort food rather than haute cuisine, but Seiko's 5 is revolutionary

- MARK MCARTHUR-CHRISTIE

A POLISHED AND brushed stainless steel manufacture case with a multi-link, integral bracelet. A rich black dial with applied indices. Just three hands - hour, seconds and minutes. Best of all, an entirely in-house, 26-jewel, automatic movement beating at 21,600bph with a 40-plus-hour power reserve that can trace a distinguished heritage back to the '60s.

What's the watch? Audemars Piguet Royal Oak? Girard-Perregaux Laureato? Maybe even a Chopard Alpine Eagle? It's got to be a Genta, right? And from one of the Sainte Trinité of Le Brassus, La Chaux-de-Fonds or Geneva.

Big fat nope on all counts. It's my old Seiko 5 7S26-3130 from the early 1990s. From memory, it was all of £35 from a jeweller in Cirencester. And it's as good a proof as any that a proper watch doesn't need to cost you your immortal soul and five years languishing by the telephone waiting for that call from your authorised dealer.

During the 1960s and '70s when the 5 emerged, Seiko was an absolute powerhouse. Pretty much every time you looked, Seiko had done something else cool. In 1967 the firm gave the Swiss such a scare in the Neuchatel Observatory Competition for accuracy that they stopped running it before they lost. It went on to produce the first quartz watch - the Astron in December 1969. The 5, launched in 1963 as the Seiko Sportsmatic 5, was Japan's first automatic day-date watch.

While that fancypants Astron cost more than your car, the 5 was more wallet-friendly. At the time, they retailed in the US at $49.50 and the firm's advertising proclaimed 'You can buy a watch as good as this from someone else. But you'll pay twice as much for it.