News · Arcanaut

Arcanaut's Fordite 2.0 lets you pick the exact one-off car-paint dial you want

Eight one-off paint-slab dials are up on Arcanaut's configurator, with two case sizes, two handsets and up to nine lume colours to build around them.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 2 min read · 11 August 2026

Arcanaut Arc II Fordite dial named Mirage Spectre, orange and white swirled layers of cured car paint — Arcanaut

Mirage Spectre. Yokai Splash. Alka Lanka. Those are dial names, and each one belongs to a single watch, because the stuff they are cut from never repeats itself. Fordite is old car paint, scraped off the skids and hooks that carried bodies through the ovens on American production lines, enamel baked onto enamel until somebody worked out it saws open like agate. It used to go in the bin. Arcanaut has been cutting it into dials for years.

What changed on 8 August is that you choose which piece you get. The Danish brand calls it Fordite 2.0. Eight one-off Arc II watches went up on the store across 7 and 8 August, and every listing shows a photograph of the actual dial blank, milled and finished by hand by co-owner James Thompson (better known as Black Badger) in his Gothenburg workshop. Pick the pattern, then build the watch around it.

Arcanaut Arc II Fordite dial named Yokai Splash, red and white paint layers cut across the grain — Arcanaut

Grand Paw, Spear and nine lume colours

The configurator runs further than most brands bother with. Two case sizes: 40.5mm across, 49mm lug to lug and 13.8mm thick, or 37mm across, 45mm lug to lug and 12.8mm thick. Both micro-blasted steel, both good for 100 metres. Eight straps. Two handsets, named Grand Paw and Spear. Up to nine lume colours, which is a number you only arrive at by enjoying yourself.

There is a chapter ring in rhodium or 9-carat gold plating, offered as a legibility fix rather than a flourish, and that is an honest way to sell it, because a dial this loud does swallow the hands. The caseback takes your own engraved text, wrapped around a frosted sapphire window carrying a monochrome fordite design.

Arc II caseback with a frosted sapphire window carrying a monochrome fordite design — Arcanaut

A La Joux-Perret G101, regulated in Copenhagen

Inside is the La Joux-Perret G101 automatic, time only, with a 68-hour power reserve, assembled and regulated by Arcanaut in Copenhagen. It will sit out a weekend without stopping. That counts for more than usual on a watch you are never going to wear every day.

Each one gets a random three-digit number engraved on it. There is no edition size to be a fraction of, since no two blocks of fordite cut the same way twice, so a random number is the more honest thing to stamp on the case.

3,675 euros and a case shape that will not suit everyone

Arcanaut's own store lists them from 3,675 to 3,900 euros depending on how you spec it, all made to order. Euros are the only number you'll see, because a shop that builds them one at a time doesn't keep an Australian list.

Credit where it is due on the fit. Arcanaut says the Arc II case shape is unusual and the experience on the wrist highly specific, and it has published wrist shots at both sizes so you can work out which one you want. Worth a proper look before you commit. Forty-nine millimetres of lug span covers a lot of wrist, and a psychedelic paint slab under sapphire reads from the other side of a room.