Cartier Pasha de Cartier 41 mm WSPA0009

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The storyWhy this reference matters

The Pasha arrived in 1985 and the design is usually credited to Gérald Genta, the man who had already signed off the Royal Oak and the Nautilus. The brief was a sporting Cartier for a decade that was crying out for loud watches, and it turned up carrying the whole repertoire: a square inscribed inside a circle on the dial, enormous Arabic numerals, Vendôme lugs, a protective grille over the crystal, a turning bezel and a hundred metres of water resistance.

And with that crown cover. It is a cap that screws down over the crown to seal it, tethered to the case by a chain so that it does not end its life at the bottom of a swimming pool. Thirty-five years on, in 2020, Cartier brought the watch back with the fat trimmed off: no grille, no turning bezel, cleaner lines, proportions reined in. The one thing it left alone was the chained cap, because without it a Pasha stops being a Pasha.

The 41 mm steel version runs the automatic 1847 MC — 23 jewels, 28,800 vibrations per hour, around 40 hours — in a case 9.55 mm thick and rated to a hundred metres. The dial is silvered flinqué, stamped guilloché with a gradient that darkens towards the edges, four large Arabic numerals at 12, 3, 6 and 9 sitting outside the square minute track, and a date window at roughly half past four with no magnifier over it.

SpecificationsThe numbers, in one table

IdentificationHow to tell it apart

Forty-one millimetres across, 9.55 thick, steel case. Silvered flinqué dial, square minute track inscribed in the circle, Arabics at 12, 3, 6 and 9, blued hands, central seconds, date between four and five. And the word Automatic printed on the dial.

The crown works on two levels, and you want to know that before you see one in the metal. What you see from outside is a fluted cap set with a synthetic spinel, screwed to the case and tethered by a chain. Underneath it, hidden, sits the actual crown: small, and the one that does the winding and setting.

The WSPA0009 leaves the factory with two ways of wearing it: a steel bracelet with SmartLink and a dark grey alligator strap, both on the QuickSwitch fitting with a steel deployant. If a seller has only one of them, the set is incomplete. And do not mix it up with the W2PA0009: the same watch in two-tone with yellow gold, and the prefix is the only thing separating them on Cartier's own site.

CollectingWhat collectors check

Work the crown before you buy. The real one, under the cap, is small and awkward to handle, a point even the friendliest reviews concede, so unscrew it, pull it out, set the time and screw it back a couple of times over. If the cap will not seat squarely, or you struggle to find the thread, you are looking at a serious problem and an expensive one to put right.

The chain and the thread on the cap are the first parts to wear and the first to go missing. A Pasha without its cap is a Pasha with a hole in it, both to look at and to use — and with a hundred metres claimed and a screwed cover doing the sealing, the state of the gaskets stops being a footnote. Ask for the service history.

Count the links and try the fittings. SmartLink lets you take links out by hand, which means they go missing with astonishing ease; the QuickSwitch should release and lock the strap with a crisp click and no slack in it. On the case, the polished bezel is the surface sacrificed at every refinish, so look at whether it still holds an even width all the way round, or whether a repolish has eaten it back into the brushed flank.

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