H. Moser & Cie made fun of the Apple Watch – now it's built its own

Stuff.tv

30-05-2025

Back in 2019, H. Moser & Cie. raised eyebrows with a cheeky idea: make a mechanical watch that looked like an Apple Watch. That piece, called the Swiss Alp Watch, is well worth checking out if you're a smartwatch fan. It was as much a parody as it was a protest – a reminder that a ticking, handcrafted watches could still hold their own in a world of black screens and constant notifications. But today, the brand isn't joking anymore…
With its new Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition, Moser has gone from mocking the smartwatch to building one of its own. This is a high-end, feature-packed, digital tool, built in partnership with Alpine Motorsports and designed specifically for the demands of the Formula 1 team.
The world of car-watch tie-ins is full of branding exercises. A carbon fibre dial here, a racing stripe there. Job done. But the partnership between H. Moser & Cie. and Alpine goes well beyond the usual badge-swapping.
The two brands started working together in 2024, aiming to do something meaningful – to make watches that serve a purpose within Alpine's F1 and Endurance racing teams. And that's exactly what they've done here.
They've released a pair of watches under the Streamliner banner: one mechanical, one digital. The first – the Streamliner Alpine Drivers Edition – is a bold, skeletonised flyback chronograph built for the wrists of Alpine's race drivers (Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto). The second – the Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition – is a fully connected hybrid smartwatch, designed for the mechanics and crew who keep the show running.
Streamliner Alpine Drivers Edition
Let's start with the mechanical one. The Streamliner Alpine Drivers Edition is powered by a skeletonised version of the AgenGraphe movement – a top-tier chronograph calibre developed with Agenhor. It's a sleek machine, built around legibility and racing functionality.
Gone are the traditional sub-dials. Instead, it uses a central display for minutes and seconds, with a flyback function for instant resets – a must in motorsport. Visually, it's like a stripped-down single-seater: V-shaped bridges hint at F1 suspension arms, the central bridge mimics a helmet, and the rotor is shaped like an Alpine wheel rim.
The 42.3 mm case is crafted from blue PVD steel and topped by a slightly domed sapphire crystal.
It's an ode to performance, yes, but with the stripped-back Streamliner elegance that's become Moser's signature.
Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition
But it's the Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition that's the real leap. It's an actual smartwatch, akin to a Withings or Pininfarina. A proper tool for Alpine's engineers, designed from the ground up with their input.
It runs on a connected platform built by Sequent and connects to your phone via Bluetooth Low Energy 5.3. It has a discreet black screen that lights up with race-critical information, and includes a unique 'Race Mode' activated by a Sync button. That mode brings up team-specific messages, countdowns to race starts, and alerts tied to the F1 calendar. There's also a GMT function with a country selector, a split-seconds chronograph, and a perpetual calendar.
The battery lasts up to a year in time-only mode, or six Grand Prix weekends when fully lit and connected. So there are no overnight charging rituals here.
The Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition is compatible with both iOS and Android.
Despite all the tech, Moser has kept the brand's visual DNA alive. There's a small domed Funky Blue fumé dial with hands and indices, giving it that classic Moser feel. It's part digital instrument, part luxury watch – entirely new territory.
Availability
The two watches come packaged as a set – only 200 of them will be sold together, in a proper collector's case, priced at $70,000 (approx. £52,000). But the Mechanics Edition will also be available separately to owners of Moser's previous Alpine-themed tourbillons, limited to 500 pieces, showing this isn't just a one-time experiment.
Moser calls it 'an opening chapter', and while there's no word yet on whether the Mechanics Edition will ever be offered to the wider public, it shows what's possible when a traditional watchmaker embraces tech.
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