I have been obsessed with Squale cased watches since I first spied one on ebay so many years ago. All of my Squale searching has been done with the hope that someday I would land the Spirotechnique branded version. I'm not sure why I like the spiro-badged watches, but I think it has something to do with classic 70s logo and the effect it has on the watch. I feel like it makes it look like professional equipment (which is a little ironic considering nowadays, most co-branded stuff is garbage). These were clearly very high quality watches at the time and were constructed with little concern for cost. They were meant to be top of the line dive watches of their era and frankly, they still are very capably built. It is a true tank of a watch with nothing extra on it. It's just big enough to safely house the auto movement and be legible at depth. Fat hands, crown at 4 and a lumed acrylic insert just make these the tastiest vintage pieces out there IMHO. Proportion is the key to good design and is something that is often overlooked by todays fly-by-night watch companies. This particular example was won in a poker pot in the South of France and ended up living in Texas before it winged it's way to me. On to the pictures.

Dimensions: Width - 40mm (case) 41.5mm (bezel)
Lug Width - 20mm Lug to lug, longitudinally - 48.2 mm Height 17.5mm







For a little perspective I took some snaps with my other Squale and Spirotechnique watches. The PVD Squale is the big body version that is very similar but not an exact match to my grail of grails, the Blancpain Bund Fifty Fathoms. The Tag Heuer Spiro is the thinnest perhaps due to it's 200m rating and although the case on the PVD Squale is the beefiest, the flat sapphire crystal keeps it a little thinner than the super-domed Blandford and Spirotechnique Squales.