
The El Primero Powered the Rolex Daytona. Today It Is the Best Value in Chronographs.
Zenith's El Primero was among the first automatic chronographs, runs at a high 5Hz that times to a tenth of a second, and powered the Rolex Daytona from 1988 to 2000. Yet a steel Chronomaster Sport trades around 10,000 dollars, a third of that Daytona. A working dealer's read on the manufacture chronograph the market keeps overlooking, and the watchmaker who hid its tooling in an attic to save it.