CITIZEN Leopard Super Beat ref.4-720440-K cal.7211 / 1970s Hi-Beat

In the 1970s, while Seiko was leading the high-beat race, Citizen produced an answer of its own.

That was the Leopard Super Beat.

Fitted with a high-precision movement running at 28,800 vibrations per hour.

A specification that held down daily rate and positional variation was advanced for its time, and it is still the dependable beat used in many fine Swiss watches today.

The model name Leopard means exactly that, and the black leopard mark set on the dial gives off a quiet presence, as though standing for its quickness and its precision.

The case is cushion-shaped stainless steel.

A polished bezel and case produce a smooth, fine lustre which, with the silver sunburst dial, embodies a refined vintage aesthetic.

The applied indexes each carry a single black line, with two lines at twelve as an accent — details that are not to be missed.

The contrast between black hour and minute hands and an orange seconds hand is exquisite, achieving both legibility and good looks.

But the current of that era was too fast, and too cruel.

The impact of the quartz crisis went beyond anything imagined, arriving as a wave of the new age — more accurate, cheaper, more suited to mass production — and a great many mechanical watches developed in house, the Leopard among them, were swallowed by it.

Yet the mark the Leopard left is real.

An elegant movement of the hands, a high-beat pulse, and a machine's own pride.

These can no longer be spoken of in the logic of mass production; perhaps the will of craftsmen to answer with engineering was struck here, as a black leopard.

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