Ferdinand “Butzi” Alexander Porsche is widely known as one of the main principles behind the design and development of the Porsche 911. What a lot of people don’t know, however, is that he was basically pushed out of executive Porsche positions by his father. Essentially, Butzi’s old man got sick of the all the family infighting within Porsche and kicked all of his kids to the curb.
But Butzi was hooked on design and couldn’t stop the design process within his head. So in 1972, he designed the Porsche Design Chronograph 1 – the world’s first all black timepiece with an eye on both reliability and simplicity.
The Porsche Chrono was crazy successful and went on to live in many different variations. They pop up on eBay quite often and if you are patient, you can usually find a clean example for under $3k – a relative bargain in the industry.
