It’s been twenty years since the last quartz-powered Rolex watch left the factory, closing the door on a seemingly indifferent relationship in which the brand never really became a fully fledged member of the battery club.

In hindsight, Rolex was right to cast a wary eye at quartz, never fully committing itself to the cause. Yet over a 25-year period it produced several watches that are now highly sought-after and stand out for having their very own aesthetic. Unmistakeably Rolex, yes, but with some nifty design tweaks that weren’t used on their mechanical models.

Read on to find out why Rolex’s quartz era provided one of the most interesting chapters in its 113-year history…

An Alliance Is Formed

In the 1960s, a consortium of leading Swiss luxury watch brands formed an alliance to make an electronic movement to rival that of Bulova’s Accutron, whose tuning fork technology had usurped Hamilton’s first-generation Model 500.

A quartz Day-Date, Reference 19018, in 18ct gold from 1978. Image: Bonhams

The consortium—calling itself Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH)—eventually developed the reliable quartz-powered Beta 21 calibre. But not before Seiko had beaten them to the prize with its own quartz-powered Astron watch.

Still, the Swiss had rallied to get a vital start in the quartz game. One that would give them a certain level of protection when venturing into this brave new horological world where the Japanese were very much in the vanguard.

Rolex, however, despite being part of the consortium, seemed reluctant to fully embrace this radical new technology.

Incredibly, when the Beta 21 was publicly unveiled by the collective 18 watch companies at Basel in 1970, it chose to distance itself from the project, preferring to show a prototype quartz model privately to customers who wished to see it.

Were The Quartz Watches Ugly?

To Rolex’s surprise, the small number of customers who viewed the prototype at Basel liked what they saw. Shortly afterwards it officially launched its Quartz Date (Reference 5100) powered by the Beta 21 and presented in 18k yellow or white gold.

Oddly, despite the initial enthusiasm, the watch was not a commercial success and it was only ever manufactured in small numbers—estimated at between a thousand and two thousand—from 1970 to 1972. This limited output of quartz watches turns out to be a recurring pattern in the decades to come.

And part of the problem may have been the design.

A two-tone Datejust with black dial, Reference 17014, from the early 80s. Image: Bonhams

Rolex’s president at the time, Andre Heiniger, who had taken over from co-founder Hans Wilsdorf, would not countenance a quartz watch that looked like a classic mechanical Rolex, hence the angular case and different bracelet designs to the usual Oyster, Jubilee and President styles.

Some claimed they were ugly, though we’ll leave you to be the judge of that.

Rolex does a ‘Rexit’

Rolex parted ways with CEH in 1972 but not because it had casually dismissed the threat of the quartz crisis. On the contrary, it considered it a serious enough threat to warrant making its own battery-powered movement. As we know, Rolex baulks at doing anything hasty, and so it took five years for them to create an in-house quartz calibre it was fully satisfied with.

In that time, Heiniger might well have been praying for quartz’s popularity to wane. He was convinced that a combination of ubiquity and affordability would render it banal—the way that TVs and radios were now an utterly unremarkable feature of everyone’s homes.

In the long-term, of course, he was right. But Rolex still played it safe, keeping a foot in both camps. Heiniger also thought that wealthy people would want something exclusive and mechanical on their wrist. The idea of abandoning mechanical watches the way that some Swiss companies were doing— Zenith famously tried to bin the equipment that made their ground-breaking El Primero movement—was out of the question.

Rolex Releases The Oysterquartz

In 1977, during one of the most eventful decades the watch industry has ever seen, Rolex released the Oysterquartz 5035, a calibre that was pointedly more aesthetic than the usual quartz affair. The 5035 featured eleven jewels and accomplished finishing on the components that included Geneva stripes, not that you could enjoy viewing them through an exhibition caseback, of course, this being Rolex.

The Rolex attitude was very much a case of, ‘If we are going to make quartz movements, we’ll make them to the best of our ability.’

The 5035 powered the Datejust Oysterquartz, while the Day-Date Oysterquartz models housed the calibre 5055. Other, more complex quartz prototypes were made, including a calibre for a perpetual calendar, but they never saw full production.

A quartz Datejust, Reference 17000A, from the tail end of Rolex's quartz era. Image: Bonhams

For the next 24 years, until 2001, Rolex produced these quartz models in steel, yellow or white gold, or a two-tone combination of steel and gold, with a few rare models made featuring jewelled dials, bezels, bracelets and Middle Eastern logos.

It’s estimated that only 25,000 Oysterquartz watches ever made it to market—an average of only 1,000 per year. When you consider that throughout the 70s and 80s Rolex was making between 350,000 to 500,000 watches a year, that’s less than one per cent of their total output.

The End Of The Affair

Rolex stopped making quartz watches in 2001 but they continued to appear in Rolex catalogues until 2003. Interestingly, this was a year before the company purchased the Aegler manufacture, which had been making its mechanical movements for years.

It was a clear statement of intent. Rolex was finally severing its ties with quartz and fully committing itself to mechanical.

You could almost sense its relief—and the ghostly voice of Andre Heiniger saying, “I told you so!”—as it served the divorce papers.

Looking for a pre-owned Rolex watch? Click here to shop now

Looking for pre-owned Rolex finance? Click here to shop now