Just hours after the announcement of the Apple Watch, car makers have jumped on the ‘wearable device’ bandwagon by announcing their own branded smart watches.
First out of the traps is Audi whose TTime features a trapezium-shaped face framed by annoyingly bright LED lights. Those who have tried a TTime prototype say it has a sport mode that makes it really uncomfortable and add that it can be read only if it is held far too close to your face.
Meanwhile, Alfa has announced its own smart watch featuring a variation of the company’s unique DNA control which makes the watch progressively more annoying and worse. The Alfa WatchFiveSix was due to be based on a Fiat watch but that project was cancelled and it will now be related to a Maserati watch. According to Sergio Marchionne, the Alfa watch will sell over 47 billion units by 2018, although it will probably have broken by then.
Marchionne has also had an influence on the new Ferrari smart watch which was to be a bespoke piece made in strictly limited numbers until Luca di Montezemolo decided to be sacked. Now the new device will be a Fiat Punto watch with a Ferrari badge crudely stuck to it. It will be launched as the ‘F1 2014 Tributo’ edition which, disappointingly, will run slow.
Over in Japan, Toyota announced its smart device and then immediately recalled it after discovering a possible problem with the stopwatch while Subaru had no such trouble with its WRX STime which is blue with gold buttons, ticks in a very distinctive way and has an inexplicable switch that makes it very, very slightly brighter.
Not to be outdone, Lotus has announced its own smart device which is based on a watch from 1996 but tweaked to run a bit faster and Morgan released first details of a wooden and aluminium wrist-mounted sundial.
Finally, Jaguar came up with a beautifully designed and extremely advanced watch but then accidentally hired a piss-poor amateur dramatics group to announce it.
