This is the new Huckberry x Timex 1979 Black Max, it’s a reissue of the original late-1970s American motorsport watch that remains faithful to the design while upgrading it discreetly.
The watch is powered by a quartz analog movement, offering excellent timekeeping accuracy with minimal complexity – it’ll just need a battery change every few years. It has a water resistance rating of 100 meters, vastly better than the original, and it has a stainless steel case and bracelet.
This is the new Huckberry x Timex 1979 Black Max, it’s a reissue of the original late-1970s American motorsport watch that remains faithful to the design while upgrading it discreetly.
History Speedrun: Timex
The history of Timex began in 1854 with the founding of the Waterbury Clock Company in Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley, an area that was then called “the Switzerland of America” for its high concentration of clockmakers.
Waterbury became known for mass-produced, affordable timepieces, producing the popular “Yankee” pocketwatch in 1895 which sold for just one dollar, and democratized watch ownership – the Yankee was essentially the iPhone of its time.
Skipping forward to 1941, amid WWII-era wartime demand, the company reorganized as US Time Corporation. It then leveraged its expertise in mass production to supply military instruments, including fuses for artillery shells. After the war, US Time shifted back toward civilian-oriented products, developing a tough wristwatch movement that could be sold cheaply while withstanding significant abuse.
This led to the famous “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking” marketing campaign of the 1950s and 1960s, which forever established Timex as a household name in the USA and boosted its sales worldwide – long before the arrival of cheap Japanese quartz watches.
By the 1970s, Timex was producing a wide variety of watches, from mechanical to early digital models, but the brand faced stiff competition during the quartz revolution. The company closed several factories, including its long-standing operations in Waterbury, and shifted manufacturing abroad to stay competitive.
The watch is powered by a quartz analog movement, offering excellent timekeeping accuracy with minimal complexity – it’ll just need a battery change every few years.
Timex remained in the game with affordable quartz watches during this period that kept its mass-market appeal intact. One of the company’s most successful watches was released in 1986 – the Timex Ironman – a digital sports watch that quickly became the best-selling watch in America.
Today, Timex operates as Timex Group, with headquarters in Middlebury, Connecticut, and manufacturing spanning Asia and Europe. The brand has carefully repositioned itself by offering classically-styled heritage reissues alongside more modern designs.
The Huckberry x Timex 1979 Black Max
The Huckberry x Timex 1979 Black Max is a modern reissue of one of Timex’s more unusual late-1970s sports watches – the original Black Max appeared at the tail end of the 1970s, when Timex was experimenting with bolder case finishes, motorsport design cues, and high-contrast dials aimed at a younger, racing-oriented audience.
It was short-lived, never widely marketed, and largely forgotten outside of dedicated Timex collector circles.
This new Huckberry collaboration brings that original design back – the watch uses a 41 mm black-finished stainless-steel case, scaled up slightly from the vintage piece but still somewhat restrained by modern standards.
The dial stays faithful to the original formula with a matte black base, white Arabic numerals, a silver tachymeter ring, and a high-visibility orange seconds hand that offers excellent legibility for timing purposes.
The Huckberry x Timex 1979 Black Max is a modern reissue of one of Timex’s more obscure late-1970s sports watches – the original Black Max appeared at the tail end of the 1970s, when Timex was experimenting with bolder case finishes, motorsport design cues, and high-contrast dials aimed at a younger, more performance-oriented audience.
Under the hood, Timex opted for a quartz movement, prioritising reliability and affordability. Water resistance is rated to 100 meters, making it more usable than the original ever was, and the black stainless bracelet reinforces the design’s motorsport character.
The watch is now available to buy directly from Huckberry with an MSRP of $249 USD, it also comes with free US shipping, and free US returns.
Images courtesy of Huckberry
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
