Dear all, I know that this should be settled as there's been a lot of investigation and, of course, Jeff's magnificent opus on the topic, still...
A couple of weeks ago I was in LVMH Italy's headquarters and had the chance to sieve through a very nice Zenith coffee table book-format hardcover catalogue, which displayed the most recent collection including the Zenith New Vintage 1969 Limited Edition (same as Abel's currently selling, for those like me who are not into Zeniths ;-)!).

Now, of course like everybody would've done, they also put pictures of the origin of the species, as it were, and pasted a very important date at the bottom of the picture: January 1969.
If memory does not fail me, this would put it as the winner of the automatic chrono race, wouldn't it?
It was very subdued and not in-your-face at all, still the implicit claim was there as far as I am concerned. So much stranger if we think this would now be an intestine struggle in the LVMH group...but not in 1969 of course.

Has anyone else seen this catalogue or seen any other claim of Zenith to have crossed the finish line first?

Cheers,

Fabrizio