Terraillon × Heuer

Announced February 24, 1972 at the Salon des Arts Ménagers at the CNIT in La Défense, the BA 3000 was a product of the A41 road. Terraillon's works at Annemasse were about an hour and a half from Biel, and Jack Heuer, newly attached to Ferrari and keen to see his name somewhere other than a dashboard, asked whether the firm that made the BA2000 would sell a timer a cook could rely on. Zanuso passed the brief to Sapper, who had already done a kitchen timer and said so.

The body is the BA2000 shortened by 75 mm of lid to make room for a round recess. Everything else on it learnt from Heuer: the reading window gained a brushed steel bezel, the graduations became batons, the index line turned orange-red, and the tare knob was replaced by a knurled steel crown with a red ring, made on the same machines as Heuer's stopwatch crowns. Going the other way, the pod lost its steel caseback to white ABS from Annemasse, and the Autavia's rotating bezel was fused to the dial so that, as on Sapper's Minitimer, you turn the whole face to set it. Pressing the crown at twelve stops the countdown, which Jack Heuer described as the only feature he would not discuss.

The pod lifts from its sprung steel collar with a quarter turn. The folding wire clip on its back is dimensioned in the Terraillon drawing to the hem of a 1971 Bragard apron, 3 mm of cotton drill doubled. The bell is a small steel cup pitched, after a week of tests in Biel, so that it could not be mistaken for the ring of a PTT telephone.

Elle liked it and L'Express noted that it cost more than six BA2000s. Heuer placed a quantity with Ferrari, and a set ended up in the kitchen of the Ristorante Cavallino opposite the Maranello factory gate, where the cooks were reported to use the timer, ignore the scale and lose the pods into the tortellini drawer.