In the recent past, I wrote that I finally became interested in car-inspired watches thanks to Atelier Jalaper and the AJ-P400 Miura. The latter was the most elegant car-themed watch I had encountered in my young career as a watch journalist as it was not so obviously inspired by the four-wheeled machines we drive around and that is what I liked about it. It’s the kind of watch, which at first glance, you don’t know was designed by a car fanatic because it doesn’t come with the far-fetched wheel-shaped and speedometer-like design elements we see on many meh horological creations. It was de facto a handsome and seriously built everyday watch that had an identity of its own. (The watch isn’t dead even if I speak of it in the past tense.) It’s the kind of watch you and I can wear everyday. 

So Atelier Jalaper had found a way to make niche watches look like everybody’s potential cup of tea and it was well received. And the brand is back at it again with the AJ-003 made out of a piece of a 1962 Jaguar E-Type Semi-Lighweight, as indeed the brand’s specialty is to repurpose hoods (bonnet is the better term for it) of iconic driving machines to make dials, and then to envelop the latter with unique and singular design elements which pay homage to the car whilst contributing to making the watch aesthetically unique and actually wearable. So as you can perhaps imagine we’re going to have a lot to cover in this review and so you better pour yourself a cup or glass of whatever it is you prefer to drink at this moment in time. 

Let’s go for a ride! 

Specifications 

If this isn’t your first time on Mainspring you will know that a watch which I describe as being an “everyday” timepiece comes with a certain set of specifications that make it so. Though what that is is subjective which is also something I often say. Because wouldn’t it be weird if Atelier Jalaper would have gone out of its way (by many, many miles) to source a bonnet from an E-Type and put crap components all around it? No it wouldn’t make any sense and that’s not what one should expect from the brand. Because finding the bonnet and making dials out of it isn’t an easy thing to do, so of course Atelier Jalaper put as much attention in this process as it did with designing the entire watch and finding the right stuff to build it with. And so let’s start with the movement: a COSC-certified Sellita SW300-1 b which ticks at 4Hz and has 56 hours of power reserve. 

See? Told you. 

The dial of course is of great interest to us but I will get back to it later as it is an integral part of the watch’s design. So besides the solid caliber we also find a sandwich crystal construction (not a “sapphire sandwich”) because we find a curved sapphire on top of the dial and a mineral one on the back. The case-back screws down and the crown doesn’t so 1 -1 = 50 meters of water resistance which is fine for an everyday watch. The case measures a lovely 39mm in diameter, 45.55mm lug-to-lug, 11.50mm thick including the crystal, and a lug width of 20mm. The ETYPE are (notice the plural) shipped on leather straps with curved ends and color-matched stitching. Lastly, the case is made of 316L stainless steel and presents a lovely combination of polished and brushed surface treatments which are strategically placed to highlight certain of its parts. 

We will get back to that as well. 

Design

What was striking about the AJ-P400 and which we also find on the AJ-003 is the fact that the watch looked nothing like your typical car-themed timekeeping device. Atelier Jalaper displays a certain talent for integrating very specific design elements of the cars they drew inspiration from in ways that are extremely subtle, so much so that only those who are familiar with the car in question could spot them without being told what to look for. This might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how your brain is wired. I believe this is an excellent thing because it makes Atelier Jalaper’s watches versatile, meaning you could be a huge fan of vintage race cars and wear the AJ-003 with pride, and you could equally not give two shits about them and still wear the AJ-003 with pride. Because at the end of the day this watch is beautiful (to me) and it looks spiffy on the wrist. 

So let’s talk about the dials first, plural. There are indeed two versions of the AJ-003 and what tells them apart is how the aluminum material was treated. Once Atelier Jalaper acquired the bonnet—and it did so by contacting the owner of a 1962 Jaguar Series 1 E-Type Semi-Lightweight who won the popular French Tour Auto in 2020 and then later crashed the car—the dials were worked on to remove the paint, before being cut into circles and then finished with a vertical brushing. The first version (and my favorite) has a gray color matched by a dark gray chapter ring, whilst the second version is black because the dial was anodized (treated in an electric bath to create a protective coating) and was matched by a white chapter ring. The latter are raised from the dial to create dimensionality and is held in place on the dial by two screws. 

Because the dials are the focal point of the AJ-003, the rest of the watch has a purposeful, minimalist aesthetic. Obelisk-shaped hour and minute hands, polished and lumed, float above the magnificent dials whilst a needle-shaped and fully polished seconds hand complete the timekeeping functionality. Above the pinion we find the brand name and logo, and below it the words “chronometer certified” because it looks cool and “1480 WK” which is the license plate number of the car the bonnet belonged to. A neat touch. Though there are no hour markers it’s easy to tell the time thanks to the way Atelier Jalaper designed the raised chapter ring. At each hour increment we find numerals which highlight the 5-minute increments, and hash-marks point at the minutes. It’s a clever use of a sparse amount of visual elements to make the watch functional. 

At the risk of making this section ultra long, I wouldn’t be proud of myself if I weren’t to allocate a full paragraph to discuss the case design. The first element of which is its pronounced roundness, at the flanks and at the bezel, and even the lugs which are rounded off at their tips to reference the roundness of the Jaguar. The second element being the semi-recessed crown designed this way to nod at how the wings of the car envelope the wheels, further emphasizing the unique shape of the automobile. Then only a trained eye or that of a car nerd would have noticed that the lugs at the twelve are longer than those at the six, another nod to the E-Type on account of how far back the cabin is from the front of the car. This distinct visual element actually makes the watch more comfortable to wear, perhaps bizarrely so. 

The Heart of the Matter

There could be many hearts of the matter with the Atelier Jalaper AJ-003, but the most important one for me is the fact—again—that this watch is much more than the aluminum the dials are made out of and where it comes from. The brand did a superb job balancing the car-theme driving force with the need to make a wearable watch for regular folks like you maybe and me. Because, as mentioned in the introduction, the ETYPE isn’t your typical themed watch displaying obvious signs of what it was designed after, for example vertical stripes on the dial, an exhibition balance wheel, or a crown in the shape of a door knob. Instead, the main deal is the dial made out of the bonnet of the E-Type and the subtle design references found on the case and the hands and chapter ring which call back to the interior design of the car. 

Moreover, the Atelier Jalaper is built to be worn everyday, on the race track, and in many other places thanks to having a COSC movement, a sapphire crystal, 50 meters of water resistance, and a comfortable leather strap. (The straps are indeed quite so.) So now of course you would like to know how much money you’re going to have to spend to acquire one of these watches: $2,500 USD. Is that a lot of money for what you get? What are you actually paying for besides the dial and design and movement? Well that’s actually quite a lot already and I would add the following: superb finishing whether you’re looking at the horizontally brushed or mirror-like polished surfaces, the higher-end machining of the case and chapter ring, and the efforts that were required to round off almost all corners of the case. That goes to show, once more, that the AJ-003 is more than its dial. 

Conclusion 

“Micro and independent brands won’t cease to surprise me” someone said multiple times in the past four years. Who, you ask? I don’t know. And whoever said that is absolutely right as it was just proven again in the past 1,600 words talking about the Atelier Jalaper AJ-003. A delicate timekeeping device made with the good stuff and endowed with a design of its own which orbits between the de facto tool watch and the elegant everyday horology. The same person has often been heard to say “it’s impossible to put a price tag on design” and once again this was proven today. The AJ-003 is a singular horological creation which was thoughtfully designed and put together, never leaning too much into the cheap car-themed homage nor never staying too far from the theme of auto racing. For $2,500 USD it’s a bargain for what you get. 

Should you be keen on acquiring one of the two versions of the Atelier Jalaper AJ-003, hop on the brand’s website now to pre-order one with an estimated delivery of August 2025. 

Thanks for reading.