The movement and about..

The “50 years of Volvo” Certina: Volvo issued some 64,000 watches to employees not just in the factory but all around the world in order to celebrate “50 År Volvo – 1927 – 1977”. Certina was at the time a prime supplier of watches to Volvo who issued them as 100,000-km-presents to valued customers. So it was quite natural that Volvo turned to Certina when it came to a gift for the celebration of Volvo’s semi-centennial. 

Basically, there were two types of watches: for male employees, Volvo issued the Certina Blue Ribbon with a steel case, for women the Certina ‘Mayfair’ with a gilt one. The watches were taken from Certina’s 1977 range. The ‘Blue Ribbon’ was equipped with an in-house movement, the well-developed 25-651/25-651M, and all Volvo watches were meant to be delivered with the in-house caliber. However, Certina’s capacity at that time was at around 650,000 watches per year, and the production of mechanical movements was in the process of being wound down, so it’s easy to see why an order the size of Volvo’s, mopping up some ten percent of Certina’s overall capacity, could not be fulfilled with in-house movements alone. 

Therefore Certina bought additional ETA movements (ETA 2783) which were refined and renamed “25-011”. Because the arrangement of the date ring was slightly different, new dials needed to be used as well, with a slightly smaller date window aperture set slightly to the center when compared with the original dial.