Omega Ranchero: The Fourth Musketeer
In 1958, Omega created a watch line called Ranchero. It was inspired by the Railmaster, the Seamaster 300 and the arrowhead hand of the 1957 Speedmaster, so there was no mistaking its lineage. Ranchero: sound of freedom, adventure and virility.. Omega’s cowboy should have become the entry-level model in the late 1950’s. But the watch encountered resistance in Spanish-speaking countries, from potential customers who were put off by its name that means “ranch hand” in Spanish. As a result, the Rancheros, were discontinued and are quite rare today; the watch was only made for two years (1957 & 1958), and sold for two (1958 & 1959). Ironically, this scarcity has led to high prices in the vintage watch market and the once modest Ranchero has become quite the collector’s item, as collectors began to realize that the combination of these rare hands and the short production span were all the makings of a classic. The name had a short revival in 1976 but only in Belgium. The revival was short lived and the Ranchero is destaned to be one of the most famous of the lost line !
Funnily enough, Ranchero was also the name of a Ford pick up from the same era !
Now lets’ study this peculiar watch in more details...
Here’s my ex example of the ck2990 Ranchero. You see that the 36mm case is quite flat and the large dial makes the watch look reasonable large. The dial definitely looks similar to the Seamaster, Railmaster and Speedmaster from the 1950’s, while the case is more like a “normal” Omega from the 1950’s.
The crown has an unusual shape and is different from the other sports models. Again, it looks more like a crown of a regular Seamaster, or a dress watch.
The caseback is a snap-on type and has a specific “waterproof” engraving. Again, this is completely different from the sports models and you understand what makes the watch the entry level model as it is probably much less waterproof than the Railmaster, Speedmaster and of course Seamaster.
The movement is the Omega manual wound cal. 267 with 17 jewels that was created in 1956 and whose diameter is 30mm (hence the printing on the Ranchero dial)
No doubt, with suc a dial, the watch looks really great in the sun !
As you can see on the next picture, the Extract from the Records sent by the Omega Museum states that my watch was sold in Italy in 1959.
Here’s an extract from the first 1959 catalog. You can see that the Ranchero was the least expensive watch listed and came in both regular (sub second) and sweep second versions.
Beside the stainless steel model, there are some quite surprising variations of the Ranchero.
Here’s a white dial 2990-1 that was bought by a fellow Purist some years ago
here are a couple of gold capped models with different dials
(credit: Omegaforum)
So there's definitely a Ranchero variation for every Omega collector !
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