IMHO, the horological community have never gotten over their butt hurt from being dethroned by quartz.
I say that as somebody who loves & owns mechanical watches. But my beater is a quartz Timex that cost less than $100, and I love it too. 😎
Very true. Seiko single-handedly uppercut the global watch industry in a single move with the Quartz Astron. Countless small watchmakers folded and many big names barely made it out alive.
The Quartz Crisis is one of the most dynamic chapters in watch history...elite watchmakers completely reinventing themselves overnight to stay relevant, moving the focus from technical perfection & fanciful design to clean-cut, brutalist luxury (with a little help from Gerald Genta of course).
Seiko is, in a way, directly responsible for the creation of watches like the AP Royal Oak, Patek's Nautilus and Vacheron Constantin's Overseas, just to name a few...now arguably some of the most iconic & sought after watches of all time.
The entire high-end sports luxury watch genre owes it's gratitude to the Quartz Crisis. Necessity truly is the mother of invention, and in this case the necessity was survival — the most primal need of them all.
So yes, lots of bad blood due to quartz. I don't think the Swiss will be forgetting that anytime soon!