When watches look a bit like cars

Watchmaker Chopard, run by Karl-Friedrich Scheufele - a Mille Miglia veteran and mate of six-time Le Mans winner Jacky Ickx - may just have been the first to use car cues for its chronos. The rubber straps were imprinted with Fifties-style tyre treads and, for the dreamy LUC Engine One Tourbillon (pictured left), the design boffins set a tourbillon into what looks like an engine block, complete with cylinder heads.

Parmigiani's Bugatti-branded watches have a power-reserve indicator, just like the Veyron. They also happen to be hideously expensive, costing around £163k a pop. But, hey, your Bugatti's tyres cost £22k a set, so stop moaning.

Blessed with the initials of a much-missed - but unrelated - F1 team, French firm Bernard Richards Manufacture loves exposed bolts, racing colour themes and, above all, hands drilled to look like the spokes of a Fifties steering wheel, with lugs and buckles drilled out like the lightened chassis of a Twenties Mercedes-Benz SSKL.

TAG's extravagant Monaco V4 borrows design cues from a Porsche 917. Its belt-drive movement resembles the Le Mans winner's cooling fan, and its caseback is clear, so you can see the innards, just like you can view the Porsche's oily guts through a transparent rear deck.

The face of the Italian company's Quattro Valvole looks like four valves set in a cylinder. The range includes a watch made in partnership with Brembo, featuring a case made from the same carbon-ceramic material used in race-car brakes. Others are made from bits of real MotoGP bikes and military helicopters.

Of all his rare and shiny cars, Lauren's fanciest is the Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic, probably the best of the three (or possibly four) left in the world. Its dashboard gave him the idea for the look of his Automotive watch: a white-on-black dial that could've been plucked straight from the Bugatti's cabin, surrounded by real elm burl to match the wood in the car.

Giuliano Mazzuoli started out with his range of Manometro watches, styled to look very much like... gas meters. But as an ex-racer who collects Alfa GTAs, Mazzuoli designed his Contagiri watch to look like a rev-counter. And, just like in real life, the hand doesn't make a full revolution, but flies back at the end of the scale, just like - yep - a rev-counter.