Steve McQueen Finally Gets A Dedicated Hanhart 417 ES
At some point, everyone into vintage watches comes across certain iconic photos. They’ll see Paul Newman wearing cool Carrera-style sunglasses and his Daytona, Nina Rindt holding a “Großer Preis von Österreich” (Austrian Grand Prix) pamphlet with the UG chrono on her wrist, and Steve McQueen sitting on his couch, playing with his revolver, and wearing a cool vintage military chronograph — his Hanhart 417 ES.
Full disclosure here: I’m a McQueen fan and have been since I was a kid. The Magnificent Seven is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I still remember watching it on VHS as a child, way before I knew or cared about watches.
The 417 ES
McQueen wore the living daylight out of his Hanhart 417 ES, including at the International Six Days Trial motorcycle race in Erfurt, wearing number 278 as part of the first official American team. He even wore it at the Baja 1000 in the Mexican dust. The list goes on and on. You can find the photos yourself; there are plenty. What strikes me is that the watch shows up again and again through the years and in completely different contexts. That’s not a brand placement. It’s just a watch he loved and wore.
Hanhart built the Limited Edition No. 1 around exactly that story, and McQueen’s grandchildren, Chase and Madison, got directly involved. They suggested putting their grandfather’s signature on the dial and approved its use. They also helped design the limited-edition card modeled after McQueen’s 1964 international FIM racing license and signed it themselves. You can find it in the box right under the 417 ES.
What you get
The original 417 ES came out in the mid-1950s as an official chronograph for the German Bundeswehr. It was robust, legible, and no-nonsense, as these military pieces tend to be. The new edition draws inspiration from that watch. It has a 39mm case, just like the original, as well as the characteristic bidirectional coin-edge bezel and, of course, the red pusher. Legend has it that a pilot’s wife once painted her husband’s pusher with red nail polish so he’d think of her every time he reset the timer. Practically speaking, the red color also prevented pilots from accidentally resetting the chronograph mid-flight.
Despite a domed sapphire crystal, the watch is only 13.3mm thick. It wears like the vintage counterpart without feeling chunky. The dial is matte black, with McQueen’s signature small and understated just above the 6 o’clock marker. Although the hands and numerals have faux-patina Super-LumiNova, it’s not annoying, just a tad darker than usual. It gives a warm, aged glow rather than a stark, modern white.
A flyback chronograph caliber inside
Flip the 417 ES over, and you’ll see the hand-wound Sellita AMT5100 M caliber through the screw-down display case back. This is a proper flyback movement with hacking seconds and a 58-hour power reserve. One press of the bottom red pusher instantly resets and restarts the running chronograph. One major upgrade over the historical counterpart is the 10-bar (100m) water resistance. Then again, these watches are meant for the cockpit or the driver’s seat of the King of Cool’s Porsche, not your local swimming pool.
Strap and packaging
McQueen wore his 417 ES on a cuff strap (or a Bund strap, as watch enthusiasts call it), the kind where the leather runs as a single continuous piece beneath the case. Hanhart reproduces it here in Shell Cordovan from the Italian tannery Comipel. This dense, vegetable-tanned leather has a smooth, almost lived-in look. The box includes a booklet, a numbered plaque, an iconic bottle of red nail polish, and the limitation card signed by Chase and Madison McQueen.
What’s left to say?
Hanhart has produced just 300 examples of the 417 ES Steve McQueen Limited Edition No. 1, each with a retail price of €2,890 (including VAT). We’ve all seen those odd celebrity-tied partnerships; you know, the ones where there isn’t a single thing in common between the brand and its “ambassador.” This isn’t one of them. Steve McQueen wore his Hanhart 417 ES because he liked it, long before anyone thought to put his name on the dial. And for a kid who grew up watching him on a grainy VHS tape, seeing that connection made official, with his actual grandchildren’s signatures on the card, hits a little different. That’s the kind of story that doesn’t need hyperbole, and Hanhart, to its credit, didn’t embellish it at all.
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