After years of requests, Shinola has finally unveiled a mechanical watch. The Detroit-based company’s watches have, until now, used Swiss-sourced quartz movements. The new watch, called the Lake Erie Monster, is the company’s first timepiece using an automatic movement from its Swiss partner Ronda and is the result of two years of work.
“Since the inception of the brand, people have been asking for a mechanical watch, but the reality of it was just not there over the past few years,” says Shinola President Jacques Panis told Gear Patrol.
The delay came because Shinola was waiting for its Swiss partners to finish making a mechanical movement. The movements are manufactured in Switzerland and then sent to the United States where they’re assembled in Shinola’s Detroit facility.
The Lake Erie Monster is capable of surviving a 1,000-foot dive and meets the ISO 6425 standard for dive watches.
If you want one of them, you better act fast. Right now the timepiece is planned to be a limited edition release with only 500 being sold for $2,250. That said, it won’t be Shinola’s last. The company has said it has plans to make more mechanical watches in the future.