Enicar Sherpa OPS

Why We Love It

Enicar is a lesser known brand in vintage watch collector circles, but they shouldn't be.

During the golden age of sporting wristwatches (1960s-1970s), Enicar produced some incredibly high quality and beautiful timepieces, including divers and chronographs. With looks partway between Heuer and Omega, Enicars often stand out for their colorful dials and unique case designs.

This piece, a Sherpa OPS, stands out primarily due to its PVD-finished case. Amongst the first of its kind (alongside the Heuer Monaco "Dark Lord" and DOXA Army), the OPS is based on the Sherpa 600, but was geared towards a decidedly military/outdoors aesthetic. 

In untouched condition bearing the signs of a life well lived, this example features its original PVD finish and a "Mark II" configuration dial and bezel assembly, complete with orange accents and its signature twin crown design.

OPS models are very rarely seen and are perhaps the most collectable model from the Enicar range - we don't know when we'll see another, so don't miss a chance to snap up this honest and supremely cool example!

For more information on the Enicar Sherpa line, check out this great article over at thespringbar.com!

The Story

While being still relatively unknown in the United States, Enicar is brand with roots reaching back into the 19th century Swiss clock making community of Granges near Le Chaux-de-Fonds.  The brand's progenitor, Ariste Racine (who derived the name 'Enicar' from reversing his own last name) grew the company steadily into the 20th century when they receive wide acclaim for their robust pocket watches that became favorites among officers in WWI.  

By the 1930s, Enicar was producing wristwatches and set its sites on building watches that could be worn in any environment.  Drawing from the needs of mountaineers and explorers, Enicar launched their Sherpa line, developing various sports models through the 1960s.  Among these was the Sherpa Guide, a beefy tool watch that incorporated date, GMT and 24-hour timing functions that, when used in conjunction with the world-time bezel, enabled the wearer to calculate the time in major cities across the world.      

Though complex in looks, the Enicar Sherpa Guide is fairly simple to use.  Let's you're in London and it's 2PM and you would like to know the time in San Fransisco.  First, convert the local time to 24-hour time, making it 1400.  Next, rotate the outer world-time bezel so that London (denoted on this bezel as GMT) lines up with the 14 on the inner bezel.  Now, locate Los Angeles on the bezel and read the 24-hour time that lines up with it on the inner bezel, and voilà!

In addition to the world-time functionality, the Sherpa Guide has a standard GMT complication which, when used with the two tone (colored to depict daylight hours in yellow and nighttime hours in black) inner rotating bezel operated by the upper crown, allows the wearer to easily keep track of two time zones simultaneously.  

We're always searching for interesting pieces of horology here at analog/shift, and we are happy to be able to dust off gems like this.  A little colorful, a little crazy, this Sherpa Guide is exactly what we love about vintage watches - functionality and playful looks rolled up into a package that was designed for rugged every-day wear.  This one is also a sort of time capsule; the contemporary cities of Yangon and Mumbai appear as their defunct names, Rangoon and Bombay respectively, a footnote that makes this watch a charming reminder of the past.