Don't miss the next drop
The red numerals on this blue dial are a catalog code. When Tissot launched the line in 1965, PR stood for Particularly Robust, and 516 marked the sixteenth model of the fifth series, the family Tissot kept for water-resistant watches. On this vintage Tissot PR 516 the letters are printed in white and the number in red, with the applied T emblem above the Tissot signature.
The robust part started with a racing driver. In 1958 Harry Zweifel, a Swiss driver who raced for Scuderia Glaroma in the British Formula 2 championship, sent Tissot a signed photograph inscribed “Meine Tissot ist an jedem Rennen dabei,” my Tissot is with me at every race. That unsolicited note began the company’s link with motor racing, and seven years later racing gave Tissot the brief for the PR 516.
Period advertising placed the watch on the track, in the air and in the water, then simply “everywhere.” The first PR 516 of 1965 wore a bracelet drilled with holes that echoed the spokes of a racing steering wheel. In 1968 the line added a chronograph with a blue triangle for counting down the five-minute rally period before a start. This watch is the plainer branch of that family: time and date, wound by hand, with the racing name printed in red.
Inside is Tissot’s manual-wind caliber 2461, made from 1972 to 1980. Tissot gave it a shortcut for the calendar, so repeated pushes on the crown advance the date. The movement is signed TISSOT and stamped 2461.
The 34mm steel cushion case runs into a broad H-link bracelet through a narrow center attachment, so case and bracelet read as a single shape. The blue dial has a radial finish, baton markers and a date at three. Fine hairlines cross the crystal, case and bracelet, and the hands show small marks.
The caseback holds the oldest detail. Stamped on its inner face, along with a shield enclosing the script Tissot signature and FAB. SUISSE, is the name CHˢ TISSOT & FILS. Tissot began in Le Locle in 1853 as a father-and-son business run by Charles-Félicien and Charles-Émile Tissot. With ACIER INOXYDABLE and 42630-4X beside it, a hand-wound racing-line watch keeps the family’s name inside its back.
