Motoring Journalist, Presenter & Rally Competitor
Henry Catchpole's Autodromo Group B Pegasus Edition: The Watch Built for Someone Who Actually Competed in a Rally
Evo magazine's former features editor, Hagerty's The Driver's Seat presenter, British Rally Championship competitor, and owner of an unfinished 1979 Ford Escort Mk2 rally car he hopes to finish one day — Henry Catchpole is wearing the Autodromo x Mobil 1 Group B Pegasus Edition. One of 70 ever made, sold out in under 24 hours, built to honour the most spectacularly dangerous era in rallying. It fits him with an exactness that most watch spots can only aspire to.
Henry Catchpole — Autodromo x Mobil 1 Group B Pegasus Edition. Source: Hagerty / YouTube |
|
Henry Catchpole grew up going to the Goodwood Festival of Speed with his parents — both serious car people — and watching MG Car Club meetings. He took the first issue of Evo magazine from a friend in 1998 while still at school, was immediately struck by its photography and depth, and spent the following years working toward being the kind of journalist who appeared in it. He studied at the University of St Andrews, spent three months on work experience at Evo in Northampton, got offered a staff job, and over the next decade rose to Features Editor. At 6'5", he has always had to fold himself into the cars he was reviewing. He has never appeared bothered by this.
He moved to DriveTribe and then founded The Intercooler, building a reputation as one of the sharper writers and most engaging presenters in British automotive media — known, as his own biography puts it, for describing the feeling of being behind the wheel rather than the engineering underneath it. In 2022, Hagerty brought him on as the anchor of a new show, The Driver's Seat, which covers European sports cars for the Hagerty YouTube channel. His first episode reviewed a new car that wasn't technically an Escort but very much was an Escort, set in Wales, with drone footage. It is a good template for how he thinks about cars.
His personal collection is modest by the standards of the industry he covers: a slightly scruffy Renault Clio 182, and most of a 1979 Ford Escort Mk2 rally car that is currently without an engine. He has competed in the British Rally Championship — in a Suzuki Swift in 2008, and in the 2012 Jim Clark Rally. These are not the credentials of someone who attended a rally as a journalist and wrote about the atmosphere. He has been on the stages.
"Group B represents a moment in motorsport where innovation and passion were at their highest. Those cars carved through mountain passes and forests at speeds that still seem impossible today." — Bradley Price, Founder of Autodromo
Timepiece
Autodromo x Mobil 1 Group B Pegasus Edition — No. 1 of 70
Group B ran from 1982 to 1986, and in that compressed window produced the most technically extreme, most visually spectacular, and most genuinely dangerous chapter in the history of rally racing. The cars — Audi Quattro, Lancia Delta S4, Peugeot 205 T16, Ford RS200, Metro 6R4 — were effectively prototypes with minimal safety requirements, built to homologation rules so loose they invited creative misuse at every level. Crowds lined the stages without barriers. Drivers averaged speeds through forest passes that would be illegal in most countries even today. Five drivers and several spectators were killed before the FIA banned the category after the 1986 season. It was, in retrospect, an era that should have ended sooner, and produced cars and moments that will be talked about as long as rallying exists.
Autodromo was founded in 2011 by industrial designer Bradley Price, whose brief for the brand was precise: create watches that translate the aesthetic logic of motorsport hardware into wearable form — not as nostalgia, but as design. The Group B watch, first introduced in 2015 and now in its Series 2 form, has become the brand's most recognized design: slim, bi-metallic architecture (titanium capsule inside a stainless steel chassis, mimicking how those rally cars mixed exotic materials with metal subframes), and a dial vocabulary drawn directly from vintage racing tachometers. The integrated bracelet arrived with Series 2, sharpening the silhouette considerably.
The Mobil 1 Group B Pegasus Edition — the second collaboration between Autodromo and Mobil 1, following the sold-out Monoposto edition — takes the Group B Series 2 and gives it an all-over black DLC coating, a high-contrast matte black dial with white detailing, and the centrepiece: the Mobil 1 Pegasus — the red winged horse from Greek mythology, adapted as the brand's motorsport symbol — applied in lume at 6 o'clock, so it glows in the dark. White details on the hands and minute track are also lumed; red accents on the seconds track match the Pegasus. The watch is 39mm across and 9.9mm thick. It sold all 70 examples in under 24 hours. Each caseback is engraved with its individual production number and the Mobil 1 logo.
| Case | 39mm — titanium capsule in stainless steel chassis, black DLC |
| Thickness | 9.9mm |
| Movement | Miyota 9015 automatic — 42-hour power reserve |
| Dial | Matte black — vintage tachometer-inspired; Mobil 1 Pegasus in lume at 6 o'clock |
| Crystal | Domed sapphire — brushed titanium bezel |
| Water Resistance | 50 metres |
| Bracelet | Integrated DLC-coated stainless steel — butterfly deployant clasp |
| Edition | 70 pieces — sold out in under 24 hours |
| Retail | $995 at launch |
The Casting Is Exactly Right
The watch was conceived to honour Group B. The person wearing it has driven on British rally stages, owns an incomplete Mk2 Escort that shares its spiritual DNA with the cars that preceded Group B, and spent over a decade writing about what driving actually feels like from inside the car. Henry Catchpole presenting for Hagerty — the media arm of the world's largest enthusiast vehicle insurer, whose entire purpose is to keep car culture alive — is the correct person to be wearing this specific watch. There is no gap between the biography and the object.
That alignment matters more here than it might with a more expensive piece. The Group B Pegasus Edition is a $995 watch limited to 70 examples, and it sold out in a day precisely because the people who wanted it were the people it was made for — not collectors chasing appreciation, but journalists, photographers, and enthusiasts who can name every car that competed in Group B, and for whom the Pegasus logo is not brand identity but motorsport memory. On Catchpole's wrist at Hagerty, it is read instantly by everyone in the room who knows what it is. That is what a watch like this is for.
And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.
Comments