Sport Classic

The Sport Classic was launched in 1977, Pierre-Alain Blum's first major initiative after taking over the company from his father Charles two years earlier. The design, signed by architect and designer Edy Schoepfer, introduced two elements that would become Ebel's signature for the following decades: a hexagonal-profile case with a bezel secured by five visible screws, and an integrated bracelet of curved links, soon nicknamed the "wave" bracelet. In the midst of the quartz crisis for Swiss mechanical watchmaking, the Sport Classic helped build Ebel's image as a brand of sporty elegance, in keeping with the motto "The Architects of Time".

In the early 1980s the line gained the Sport Classic Chronograph version, fitted with the legendary Zenith El Primero movement — which Ebel was able to use thanks to an agreement with engineer Charles Vermot, who had secretly kept the caliber's production tooling when Zenith was about to abandon it during the quartz crisis. This collaboration, which also led to the 1984 launch of a perpetual calendar chronograph, played a concrete role in saving the El Primero from extinction and strengthened Ebel's reputation among mechanical-watch enthusiasts, while also bringing the brand to wider public attention thanks to the era's television popularity, which associated Ebel watches with a sporty, elegant look very much in vogue in the 1980s.

Over time the Sport Classic's center of gravity has shifted: the more recent versions, in production today, lean mainly toward women, with more compact cases, mother-of-pearl dials in various colors, applied Roman numerals and bezels set with diamonds, while keeping intact the two original elements from 1977 — the hexagonal case and the wave bracelet — which remain Ebel's most immediately recognizable signature.