Depancel is a contraction of Delage, Panhard and Facel Vega, three French car manufacturers that no longer build cars. Clément Meynier, an engineer, founded the brand in 2018 and has kept it on that theme since. The new Serie-R Chronograph Ice Blue takes its colours from a specific car rather than a general mood, which is the part worth paying attention to.
The car
The reference is a 1947 Talbot-Lago T26. The premium version of the T26 was sold as a bare rolling chassis, then sent to a coachbuilder to be bodied. The car Depancel worked from went to Figoni & Falaschi, a Paris workshop known through the 1930s for aerodynamic bodies and for two-tone paint schemes laid out to follow the curve of the wings. The watch splits its dial the same way: an ice-blue base with a darker midnight-blue 30-minute counter at three o'clock, standing apart from the rest of the face the way a painted fender stands apart from the body.
The case
The Serie-R is rectangular rather than round, an evolution of the brand's first watch, the (Re)Naissance, whose shape came from the radiator grille of a Delage D8-120. It measures 40mm long by 36mm wide, 13.3mm thick with the crystal and 12.4mm without it, and 48.5mm lug to lug. The steel is satin-brushed across the middle case with polished rectangular pushers flanking an octagonal crown. The top edge of the case carries a curved line with sloping sides, which is where the grille reference lands.
On the left flank is a polished screwed plaque stamped with the edition number out of 100. Water resistance is 50m.
The dial
The outer band of the dial is etched with deep vertical lines, again a grille reading, and carries eight applied indices. The centre section holding the three sub-dials is recessed and sunray-brushed, so the two zones catch light differently. A second set of indices at five-minute intervals and a 60-second track sit inside for chronograph reading.
Hands and indices are filled with white Super-LumiNova. The central chronograph seconds hand and the sub-dial hands are done in the same midnight blue as the 30-minute counter, which keeps the two-tone idea consistent instead of leaving it on one sub-dial.
The movement
Behind a round sapphire caseback is the Peacock SL-4801, made in China. It is an automatic integrated chronograph with a column wheel and a vertical clutch, a transversal balance bridge, measuring 30.5mm by 6.5mm, running at 28,800vph with a 55-hour reserve.
That specification is the reason the price reads the way it does. A column wheel and vertical clutch in an integrated chronograph is architecture usually found several times further up, and Depancel has used the same calibre in earlier Serie-R models rather than treating it as a one-off experiment.
Price and availability
The Serie-R Ice Blue comes on a dark blue perforated rally strap in bullhide, handmade in France, with a steel buckle. It is limited to 100 numbered pieces at EUR 1,495 including tax, with pre-orders opened on 2 July 2026. Details at depancel.com.
