Baltic's New Special Edition Tricompax Comes With A Race-Ready Rally Timer; Norqain Has Two New Wild One Skeletons; Louis Erard Continues With Fantastic Collabs; And New From Doxa And Trilobe

In this issue:

• Baltic Teams Up With Spectacular French Rally For A Special Edition Tricompax And Race-Ready Rally Timer

• Norqain Teams Up With Stan Wawrinka And Releases Two New Wild One Skeleton Colors And Go For A Customization Program

• Louis Erard Continues With Their Fantastic Le Régulateur Releases, This Time In Collaboration With atelier oï

• There’s Already A Special Edition Of The Brand New Doxa 200T, This One In A Stunning Seafoam Green For Watches Of Switzerland

• Trilobe Adds A Moon Phase Display To The Already Mesmerising Les Matinaux L’Heure Exquise

Today’s reading time: 11 minutes and 8 seconds

👂What’s new

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Baltic Teams Up With Spectacular French Rally For A Special Edition Tricompax And Race-Ready Rally Timer

You learn something new every day. For example, I was sure that I had a pretty firm grasp on all the coolest car races out there. Only to learn, just a few days ago, that France is host to the Tour Auto, an extremely cool sounding race that is inspired by the Tour de France Automobile, created in 1899 by the Automobile Club de France. I know the Tour de France Automobile as it served as a site for battles between Maurice Trintignant, Stirling Moss, Phil Hill and Bernard Darniche and showdowns between Ferrari, Porsche, BMW and Jaguar. But I had no idea that they revived it as a race that takes 250 crew along spectacularly scenic routes in France, from Paris to Biarritz, stopping off at iconic racetracks. And for the second year, Baltic, the very expressive French brand, is serving as the official timekeeper of the race. To mark this occasion, Baltic is releasing a limited edition of their Tricompax chronograph, each accompanied by a Rally Timer set.

The Tricompax is a rare watch among chronographs, especially those from smaller brands, mostly for its attractive dimensions. It comes in a stainless steel case that measures 39mm wide. Sure, it’s a hefty 13.5mm thick, but it has a double domed sapphire crystal on top and it’s only 11mm thick without it, which is surprisingly thin for chronographs using off-the-shelf movements. Even the lug-to-lug is not egregious at 47mm. Surrounding the crystal is an aluminum tachymeter bezel that has a different tachy scale than what you might be used to otherwise - it’s gradated to measure speeds up to 200 kilometres per hour. Out back you’ll find a caseback numbered from 1 to 500. The watch is water resistant to 50 meters.

The Baltic x Tour Auto 2024 gets a brand new dial that looks amazing. It’s finished in a matte beige color with white guilloche subdials that have a black ring around them. The tricompax layout gives you a 30 minute totalizer at 3 o’clock, a 12 hour one at 6 o’clock and a running seconds at 9 o’clock. The totalizers use the traditional red, dark blue and light blue colors to help you keep track of elapsed time. The hands are dauphine shaped, polished and filled with Super-Luminova, while the central chrono hand and totalizer hands are rendered in a metallic blue. The dial has printed Arabic numerals.

Inside is the very familiar and robust Sellita SW510-M, a mechanical hand-wound chronograph movement. It beats at 28,800 Vph and has a respectable 60 hours of power reserve. The watch comes on a flat-link steel bracelet that has central links matching the brushed finish of the case and polished side links, along with a navy blue alcantara strap.

But when you buy this Tricompax you don’t get just a watch. The watch is accompanied with a Rally Timer set, which gets you a stopwatch with a matte light grey dial, powered by a Hanhart hand-wound movement with flyback function, and a dash clock with a matte black dial for quick and easy time reading, mounted to a plate that can be screwed into your race car. I love these!

The Baltic Tricompax x Tour Auto 2024 is a limited edition of 500 peices and will go on sale on April 22nd at 4PM CET, the exact time that the Tour Auto race starts. Deliveries are expected to start in mid-May. The price is set at €2,100 without VAT. See more on the Baltic website.

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Norqain Teams Up With Stan Wawrinka And Releases Two New Wild One Skeleton Colors And Go For A Customization Program

While I still don’t “get” the brand entirely, it can’t be said that Norqain is not following a tried and true gameplan, with the hope of becoming a household name in luxury sports watches in record time. It still remains to be seen if they can pul it off, but the fact is that they are signing a bunch of ambassadors to their brand, with the last one being Grand Slam tennis champion Stan Wawrinka. Just as they announced the partnership, they also came out with two new versions of their Wild One Skeleton in new colors. There’s also one other thing they announced - the Norqain Wild One of 1, which gives you the option to fully customize a Wild One with a possible 3.5 Million options. This, of course, is nothing new and has failed with every single attempt, but good on Norqain for giving it a go.

Starting off with the new Skeleton models, they share the same basic facts as the existing models, just with new colors. It’s housed in a very complex case that measures 42mm wide and 12.3mm thick, with a 49.4mm lug-to-lug. It’s a large case, but it also weighs just 78 grams, so I can see how it could be easy to wear. The case is made out of 25 parts, has a titanium container for the movement that’s housed inside a rubber shock absorber, wrapped out in a carbon composite Norteq cage. Norqain claims that their watches are shock-resistant to 5,000g which makes them good for playing tennis.

Both of the Norteq cases are primarily black, with the color coming from the rubber shock absorber that peeks out from the sides. In the two new versions, the colors are coral red and gecko green, with the color showing up on the numerals of the rehaut and the tips of the skeletonized hands. There is no dial to speak of. The closes you can get are the applied indices attached to the rehaut. Other than that, all you see is the movement.

And speaking of the movement, the brand calls it the automatic calibre N08S. But behind the name is the tried and true, albeit very budget oriented Sellita SW200-1S. Sure, it’s skeletonized and modified to be more shock resistant, but it’s still the lowest tier of the generic Sellita movements, a clone of the ETA 2824. It beats at 28,800vph, has a 41 hour power reserve and at least it’s COSC chronometer-certified. The watches come on animal cruelty-free black rubber straps with a mesh insert in matching coral red or gecko green.

The craziest thing of all is surely the price: €5,250. When brands like Oris and Sinn used the SW200 in their watches they priced at €2,500, that was rightfully called out as highly overpriced as the SW200 usually finds it’s place in sub €1,000 watches. But more than 5k to get that movement? That just hurts. See more about the watches on the Norqain website.

But Norqain is not done with strange moves. Many, many brands have tried offering the ultimate customisable watch, one that would allow you to make a watch exactly to your liking. And without fail, these efforts have failed. Maybe they haven’t crashed and burned, but they surely haven’t become the end-all-be-all of watch buying preferences. There are two main reasons for this. First, watch design is a difficult pursuit that requires nuance and experience to pull off. To expect someone to design a great watch out the gate is a tall order. And second, adjacent to that, the incredibly vast majority of people demonstrably don’t want to design their own watches. Make a decision and give them as much choice as you see fit, but don’t make them make decisions for your design department.

And yet… Norqain just launched the Wild One of 1, their program of personalising 11 aspects of the watch. The brand is proud that this gives you 3.5 million possible configurations which just sound like a nightmare to me. The one good thing is that you get to chose whether you want the SW200 or a Kenissi movement. But an additional bad thing is that these are only available in white or pink gold cases, meaning that prices start at CHF 15,560. See more on the Norqain website.

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Louis Erard Continues With Their Fantastic Le Régulateur Releases, This Time In Collaboration With atelier oï

I’m pretty sure that with the year Louis Erard had last year, they have entered my top 5 favorite watch brands. Easy. The wild watches they made with Alain Silberstein, the incredible horror-themed pieces with Konstantin Chaykin or the more subdued but incredibly beautiful collaborations with the Horophile or Massena lab have proven that they are the perfect collaborators out there. And that’s kind of their major play here, collaborating with other watchmakers and artists to create works of art at surprisingly affordable price points. Lately, their favorite canvas for these colaborations has been their Regulator model and now it gets a fresh design from Swiss architecture and design studio atelier oï, creating a truly unique watch.

Most of these collaborations use the same case, to keep things simple. This one is no different. It comes in a polished stainless steel case that’s 42mm wide and 12.25mm thick. It’s an overall minimal package, with curved lugs, an almost invisible bezel that curves into the case and a 50 meter water ressistance.

It’s all about the dial here. This dial might look familiar to you, as this is the second time atelier oï has worked with Louis Erard and this is pretty much the same watch, but with a new color. The new color comes from the fact that the dial has been made out of matte 2N gold engraved with very deep asymmetrical rays with polished bevels that look like sunrays emanating from the 12 and 6 o’clock hand pivots. The hands are baton shaped and blue, wtih ours at 12, minutes in the center and seconds at 6 o’clock.

Inside is the Sellita SW266-1 élaboré-grade automatic movement. Just like the one in the Norqain, it’s not the highest of quality, but it does allow for the regulator complication while keeping the price low. The movement beats at 28,800vph and has a 38 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a blue grained calfskin strap.

Unfortunately, the Louis Erard Le Régulateur x atelier oï is limited to a bizarrely low number of 18 and priced at CHF 3,750. As of me writing this, the watch is still not sold out. See more on the Louis Erard website.

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There’s Already A Special Edition Of The Brand New Doxa 200T, This One In A Stunning Seafoam Green For Watches Of Switzerland

Right before Watches and Wonders, maybe some two weeks ago, Doxa made a big move and introduced a whole bunch of new models in the brand new 200T line. It was a significant release for the brand, as it introduced a whole new case size to their already smaller-wearing divers. The 200T comes in at 39mm and presents an interesting alternative to large dive watches. This is a brand new watch and it’s already getting a special edition. Not something you see every day. This beautiful seafoam green version is made in collaboration with the renowned retailer Watches of Switzerland, who are celebrating their 100th anniversary.

The new 200T comes in a brand new case that has pretty perfect proportions. It measures 39mm wide and 10.7mm thick. Thanks to the cushion shape and very short lugs, the lug-to-lug measurement is just 41.5mm, giving it an almost square look. On top of the stainless steel case is a flat sapphire crystals, surrounded by Doxa’s recognisable no-decompression bezel with depth inscriptions that are either dial or accent colored. The crown screws down and water resistance is plentiful at 200 meters. The caseback is engraved with the Watches of Switzerland logo and the words “Limited Edition, 100 years, anniversary”.

The dials and hands have the same design and layout as what can be found on the larger SUB 300T series. This LE gets a sunburst patterned seafoam green colored dial, with details on the bezel rendered in the same color. The hands and numerals are gold colored and lume filled.

We still don’t know what movement is inside the watch, but Doxa tells us the beat rate is 28,800vph and the power reserve is 38 hours. It is extremely likely that it’s the Sellita SW200-1, but Doxa really should tell people what’s inside. The watch comes on the

Inside, Doxa says they have fitted a Swiss made movement, without mentioning any details. However, from the stats they give - a beat rate of 28,800vph and a 38 hour power reserve - it’s very likely that the movement is the Sellita SW200-1, a fine movement that’s easy to service and relatively reliable. Every watch will be available on an FKM rubber strap or a beads-of-rice bracelet. iconic ‘beads of rice’ bracelet and an additional NATO strap in the same green colour as the dial.

The Watches of Switzerland Doxa 200T Seafoam Green is limited to 100 pieces and available now at a price of $1,690. See more on the Watches of Switzerland website.

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Trilobe Adds A Moon Phase Display To The Already Mesmerising Les Matinaux L’Heure Exquise

Despite being as thought out and refined as a brand that has been around for at least a quarter of a century, Trilobe is a surprisingly young brand, being formed only in 2018. I say it’s surprising as they have developed at least five distinct watch collections, each of which has their own style, while maintaining the recognisable and unique way of telling time without the use of any ands. In fact, they have made so many watches in the past 6 years, they managed to retire their inaugural series Les Matinaux, only to now revive it with the new Les Matinaux L’Heure Exquise.

The new Les Matinaux L’Heure Exquise series can be had in one of three cases - two in grade 5 titanium, one measuring 40.5mm wide and the other 38.5mm, or a 40.5mm 18-carat rose gold variant. All cases are a very slick 9.2mm thick and, depending on the material, offer various combinations of satin, brushed and polished surfaces. On top is a sapphire crystal sorrounded by a domed bezel and water resistance is 50 meters.

There are two dials, both with a sandblasted matte finish, one in blue and one in a sand color. They both pay homage to the original design of Les Matinaux which put Trilobe on the map. The display is made up of counterclockwise rotating discs with hours positioned at the periphery, off-centred minutes next, and seconds now meandering “freely across the dial through a starry sapphire glass,”. At the very center is the new moon phase display.

Inside all of the new models is the X-Centric calibre, a self-winding integrated movement made by Le Cercle des Horlogers. It’s a very torquey movement that has to move heavy plates and discs, but still manages to get 48 hours of power reserve. The watches come on color matched leather straps.

Additionaly, Trilobe has a “secret” program which will allow customers to have a star-lit night sky as observed from a specific location on a particular date printed on the dial.

The Trilobe Les Matinaux L’Heure Exquise watches are priced at $14,400 for the blue or sand titanium versions. The same options in rose gold are $26,200. The Secret version is $18,000 in steel and $28,800 in rose gold. See more on the Trilobe website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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A review of the new solid 18k gold Tudor Black Bay 58

2/

Hands on with the Cartier Tortue – Monopusher Chronograph

3/

A review of the Ulysse Nardin Freak S Nomad

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

Peren Regia and Regia X use modern design elements to pay homage to an ancient calendar

Each new detail transformed it from just another black dial diver to a watch worthy of excitement- starting with a 12:00 date window. Yes, that’s right, the date is tucked right at the top of the dial- something none of us pictured when we closed our eyes. And honestly, it looks pretty darn good here- naturally at home thanks to an indice-shaped window with a color matched date wheel. And the fun doesn’t stop there. The unexpectedly tall (and lume packed!) five-minute markers add depth to a laser engraved dial already steeped in dimension, including subtle and lume free depressed minute markings around the periphery of the dial.

Read the whole review on Worn and Wound

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• It was dark and wet and dangerous in Zanesville, Ohio. Terry Thompson had let his scores of big animals out of their hard, grim cages, then shot himself in the head. The tigers and bears were loose. Night was falling. Everything was out of control. This is the horrific true story of the Zanesville Zoo massacre. Interestingly, Esquire wasn’t the only magazine reporting from this grisly story. GQ was there as well.

• For Oxford American, Wendy Brenner recounts the joys of working as an art-framer, sharing her process and tales of a boss who’s more than a little off-the-wall. As she considers the satisfaction she gets in preserving timeless treasures for clients, she reflects on her mother’s decline and how humans and memory defy preservation.

• Mark Krotov has been attending car-industry shows for more than 30 years; I can’t imagine he’s always felt this despondent about it. But his glumness is warranted (and, thankfully, very entertaining). Reporting from the New York International Auto Show—amid many digs at terribly designed cars—Krotov sets out a compelling case that most of these vehicles aren’t driving toward ecological prudence, but are instead enacting the worst of American urges. Not the most welcoming headline, but a hell of a read.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

In the unlikeliest of crossovers, I randomly stumbled on this documentary on the Prada Luna Rossa sailing team. This piqued my interest for two reasons - Panerai is a partner of the Prada Luna Rossa team and I’ve been working on something sailing related that might be interesting to you. For now, this is a pretty badass short doc.