The Oscars of the watch industry, the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Geneve, has passed without incident. Thankfully, there wasn't a Crash beating Brokeback Mountain to best film moment (it's still hard to believe that happened) and no major timepieces were callously overlooked in the nominations the way Nicolas Cage is year after year. So this week I'll focus on three winners while at the same time artfully avoiding the fantastic Breguet Classique Chronométrie, which took the top prize, lest I be accused of favouritism.
For me, one of the banner categories is best sports watch and it seems Swiss brand Zenith has a lock on the prize. The Le Locle-based watchmaker won with the excellent El Primero Lightweight (right), following on from the awesome El Primero Stratos Flyback Striking 10th that won last year. The El Primero Lightweight is chiefly notable for its case and movement material, featuring an El Primero 400 calibre made of titanium that is 25 per cent lighter than the classic calibre and which makes this the lightest chronograph calibre on the market, at 15.9 grams. And the science doesn't stop at the movement: the 45mm case is a combination of aluminium and carbon with a titanium crown and push buttons; the hands and hour markers are made of rhodium-plated steel coated in SuperLuminova; the strap clasp is black PVD; and the strap itself is made of Nomex-coated black rubber. Functions include a date window at the six o'clock position as well as a small seconds at the nine o'clock position and the obligatory chronograph with a 30-minute counter at the three o'clock position and the 12-hour counter at the six o'clock position. I haven't even talked about how cool this watch looks, but I guess that's obvious. The Zenith El Primero Lightweight is limited to 250 pieces and priced at HK$152,400.
Next we have another of my favourite categories, the "Petite Aiguille" award, the prize for the best watch priced at less than 8,000 Swiss francs (HK$64,000). The winner was the gorgeous Grand Seiko Hi-Beat 36000 GMT (left), which immediately grabs the attention with its striking green dial and all-steel construction. Grand Seikos have a bit of a cult following in Hong Kong, and with good reason, as the design notes of the watch are as clean and pure as they have been since the creation of the Grand Seiko in 1960. If you're into industry-leading technology, the Grand Seiko Hi-Beat 36000 GMT features a 9S86 movement that can pump out 36,000 vibrations per hour making it much more accurate than the standard 21,000 vibrations per hour you find on most watches. The movement features all sorts of patented inventions that I don't have room to go into here. The case is sized at a pleasingly retro 40mm and the watch has 55 hours of power reserve. The Grand Seiko Hi-Beat 36000 GMT is limited to 600 pieces and priced at HK$62,000.
Finally, we have a timepiece we've featured before but deserves another outing, the Gronefeld Parallax Tourbillon (right), which picked up the Tourbillon Watch Prize. The Gronefeld brothers deserve their victory lap after proving that the little guy can still cut it in watchmaking and the Parallax Tourbillon will likely be their defining legacy. Very briefly, as you should really google the particulars on this timepiece, the Parallax Tourbillon features a raised flying tourbillon inside a tourbillon cage that is synchronised to the large central seconds hand, which is all technical jargon to tell you that this is an incredibly accurate tourbillon that was extraordinarily hard to pull off. Another feature that most likely grabbed the judges' attention was the push-button operated mode selector with "W" for Winding and "S" for time-setting. The clever bit here is that when the time-setting function is selected, both the tourbillon cage bridge and the central seconds hand automatically return to their 12 o'clock positions and stop while the time is set. It's the little details that win prizes. The Parallax Tourbillon is limited to 12 pieces in steel and 28 pieces in red gold and prices are available upon request.
