Though Cartier has produced numerous fine mechanical watches during its 170-plus year history, by the 1990s the brand was known primarily as a producer of quartz pieces. In an effort to rejuvenate their status as a premier manufacture, in 1998 Cartier launched the Collection Privée Cartier Paris, or CPCP for short. The Collection Privée resurrected classic wristwatch designs from the Cartier archives and utilized high-grade mechanical movements from the likes of Piaget, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Girard-Perregaux.
One watch that received the “reissue” treatment was the Tortue. Conceived in 1912, the Torture featured an entirely different silhouette than that of the more traditional Tank. While their Tank collection grew to include a number of shapes — Française, Louis, Cintrée, and Basculante, just to name a few — the Tortue stood out with its sensuous, tortoise-inspired curves that lent themselves well to many different watches, from time-only models to more involved complications. Though all iterations are excellent, we’d argue that it’s the time-only versions that paint the most elegant picture.
This particular Tortue, a Reference 2496C, is a CPCP piece from the early 2000s. Housed in a 34mm yellow gold case tonneau with a sapphire crystal, a smooth bezel, and a blue cabochon crown, it features a shimmering white guilloché dial with painted black ‘Roman’ indices, an inner chemin de fer minute track, and a blued steel ‘Breguet’ handset. Powered by the manually-wound Cartier Calibre 430MC movement visible via a sapphire caseback, it comes paired to a signed, brown leather strap with a yellow gold pin deployment.
A beautiful alternative to the Tank, the Tortue is a gorgeous piece of design in any format. This yellow-gold CPCP example, however, exists on an entirely different plane. Classic in its proportions and beautifully balanced, it’s an easy sell no matter the wrist.