Tissot PRX Places Iconic 1970s Anime Robot Right On The Dial; Luminox Gives The Pacific Diver And Auto Movement; Unimatic Teams Up With RUF; And Urwerk Will Put A Part Of The SR-71 On Your Wrist

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. After a few days of nothing watches I get an issue that covers three things I love — anime (actually, I don’t really like anime, I just have a fixation on three or four shows and movies), Porsche and the SR-71 Blackbird. It’s a good day today.

If you wonder what people who are subscribed to the Patreon get, you can read this pretty incredible and mostly true story of the ruthless and revered Pasha of Marrakech and how the modern Pasha de Cartier was inspired by his life. And do read the red box below as it explains everything:

In this issue:

• The New Tissot PRX Places An Iconic 1970s Anime Robot Right On The Dial

• Luminox Uses Automatic Movements For The First Time In The Pacific Diver Series

• Unimatic And Highsnobiety Team Up With RUF To Celebrate Their Spectacular Cars

• Urwerk Brings Back The Electro Mechanical Control With Pieces Of The Actual Blackbird

Today’s reading time: 10 minutes

👂What’s new

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The New Tissot PRX Places An Iconic 1970s Anime Robot Right On The Dial

Growing up in a country that was pretty cut off from the popular culture of the rest of the world for a long while (movies would take months after release to get to our cinemas, if at all), I was uniquely privileged to grow up with a father that was as engrossed by popular culture at the time as I am now. This meant that we had stacks of tapes of old French movies, American horrors and Japanese samurai and anime. But even that wasn’t enough as I devoured everything. We had a video store in our neighbourhood that run by my childhood friend on the ground floor of their house and I would spend the weekends there trying to find the dustiest tape I could. This always meant I found something unique, as it was always the stuff that nobody else wanted to watch that was most interesting to me. One of those tapes was a complication of probably three episodes of the 1970s anime UFO Robot Grendizer. Only, it wasn’t Grendizer, as the tape was a French tape and the anime was called Goldorak. I had no idea what was going on, what the other episodes were about, but I loved it. I think I ground that tape into nothingness. But over the years, I completely forgot about the cartoon. Until today, actually. Tissot, who have revitalised a 1970s icon in the PRX, have combined that watch with the 1970s anime UFO Robot Grendizer, and it’s like my childhood has come to meet me in my adulthood.

On the outside, there’s nothing new, it’s still the PRX you know. The stainless steel case measures 40mm wide, 10.9mm thick and has a rather long lug-to-lug of 51mm, which is not made any more manageable by the integrated bracelet that has a non-articulating first link. It’s easier to wear on rubber, and seeing as how the PRX is one of the most popular watches over the past several years, you should be able to get one easy. On top is a flat sapphire crystal, and you get a transparent caseback to see the special rotor this edition has. Water resistance is still 100 meters.

More special can be found on the dial side. It’s actually much more subdued than you would expect from a watch that’s styled after a huge anime robot. It’s a deep blue base, with a carved profile of Grendizer. The carved part has a lighter blue color so it stands out, but only a bit. At night, things are way different, as those carved parts are filled with lume that glows yellow and it looks fantastic.

Inside, absolutely zero surprise. It’s the Swatch Group’s Powermatic 80. This means it beats at 21,600vph and has an 80 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a stainless steel integrated bracelet. You also get a special box that looks like the UFO Grendizer traveled in.

Best of all, the Tissot PRX Powermatic 80 40mm Grendizer is a special edition, but not a limited edition, meaning that whoever wants one will likely be able to get their hands on them. The watch is priced at €895, with tax. See more on the Tissot website.

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Luminox Uses Automatic Movements For The First Time In The Pacific Diver Series

Nine times out of ten, when someone asks you for a reccomendation for a rugged sports watch that won’t break the bank, you are most likely to say - just get a G-Shock. Because why not. With it’s shock-resistant construction and reliable quartz movement for great money, look nowhere else. However, if you still need something rugged and sporty and want something different, why not look at Luminox? The decision to look at Luminox might be even easier now that they have added three watches that feature the first automatic movements for the popular Pacific Diver collection.

Up until now, the Pacific Diver has been available with quartz movements and in two sizes — a very large 44mm and a more manageable 39mm. The new automatic version sits in the middle, in line with most dive watches on the market. The 316L stainless steel case measures 42mm wide and 13mm thick. The watch does look to have rather short lugs, so it could be wearable, but still chunky as it has a substantial 24mm lug width. On top is a rather thin bezel with an interestinb zero-marker that stick out of the bezel a bit and houses a tritium tube. All three have different colored ceramic inserts with a 60-minute timing scale, and the bezel surrounds a flat sapphire crystal. Water resistance is 200 meters.

The dials for the new automatics haven’t changed radically from the quartz versions, apart from the inclusion of a wave texture embossed into their surfaces. You get brushed syringe-shaped hands, luminous hour markers and a date window at 3 o’clock. Most of the indexes appear as slightly tapered batons, the 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock markers are large Arabic numerals, and all three colorways feature seconds hands with bright red tips. Aas for the colors, you can get them in black, blue or white. The black dial version gets a black bezel and a black rubber cut-to-fit strap. The blue dial gets a blue bezel insert and comes on a three-link stainless steel bracelet. But the best one has to be the white dial version, as the entire dial is lumed. Very cool.

Inside is the tried and true Sellita Caliber SW200-1 automatic movement. It ‘s not much of a looker, but it keeps time well and is easily servicable. The movement beats at 4Hz and has a power reserve of 38 hours.

The new Luminox Pacific Diver Automatic 3100 Series is available now and priced at €1,145 for the black version on rubber and €1,245 for the blue on steel and the lumed dial on rubber versions. See more on the Luminox website.

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Unimatic And Highsnobiety Team Up With RUF To Celebrate Their Spectacular Cars

Porsche makes great cars. They are precise, sharp, racing machines. Some would argue that they are the pinnacle of automotive achievements, breaking the laws of physics with every new generation. Well, some would say that. Others, like the German tuner turned manufacturer RUF say there are improvements to be made. And for decades, they have been improving on perfection. Good on them. They have also had a good week at Monterey Car Week, where they showed their take on an off-road Porsche 911, and of course, it is incredible. Now, they are continuing their collaboration with the publication Highsnobiety with a partnership with Italian watch brand Unimatic to put out two Modello Tre U3 with their iconic colors.

Both of the watches are based on the Modello Tre U3, which means they come in a 41.5mm wide stainless steel case with a distinct diver look and a very capable 300 meters of water resistance, not something that you see often with chronographs. The Modello Tre U3-RUF-G comes in a untreated stainless steel case with a green bezel insert with a tachymeter scale, while the Tre U3-RUF-B gets an all black case and a black bezel insert with no markings except for a yellow lumed dot at 12 o’clock.

The dials also have the same layout, with a large RUF logo and a smaller Highsnobiety logo displayed at 12 o'clock. You also get a two-register dial layout that is typical of the Modello Tre series: a 24-hour register at three o'clock and an open 60-minute totalizer opposite it at nine o'clock. The U3-RUF-G gets a white dial with a green RUF logo and green details, while the U3-RUF-B has a black dial and a yellow logo and details. Enthusiast of the German brand will instantly recognise the green as the company color and the yellow as an homage to the RUF CTR Yellowbird, one of the most iconic cars ever made.

Inside is the Seiko VK64A mecha-quartz movement. It is a quartz caliber with no running seconds hand, and the chronograph seconds hand ticks at four beats per second. The watches come on NATO straps, the U3-RUF-G a green one and the U3-RUF-B on a black one.

Now, two pieces of news. One is bad, the other… Perhaps not. First, the watch is limited to 100 pieces each. That would be very bad news, as it would mean it would be very hard to get one, if it weren’t for the actually bad news. The price. This watch is priced at €950. Not for the two. Each. This has got to be the most expensive meca-quartz I have ever seen, and it’s just bizarrely expensive. See more on the Unimatic website.

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Urwerk Brings Back The Electro Mechanical Control With Pieces Of The Actual Blackbird

The legend of the Blackbird will never die. I doubt that a plane like the SR-71 will ever be built again. And the stories surrounding it are incredible. It was build in complete secrecy, developed as a black project by Lockheed's Skunk Works division. Every pilot that has ever flown it says that it’s a horrible plane until it gets to what it does best. Fuselage panels were manufactured to fit only loosely with the aircraft on the ground. Proper alignment was achieved as the airframe heated up. Because of this, the aircraft leaked JP-7 fuel on the ground prior to takeoff. But once in the air it flew at 85,000 feet and at speeds that were not only faster than any Soviet jet at the time, but more importantly faster than most ground-to-air missiles. And still, at that speed and that height, it could take a picture of a licence plate on a car. The SR-71 was a highly classified plane, but thanks to an unfortunate incident that spewed Blackbird parts over El Paso, the public can get their hands on parts of the legendary plane. And you can have a part of it on your wrist thanks to Urwerk who are celebrating the 10th anniversary of their first EMC watch (EMC stands for Electronic Mechanical Control), which was a revolutionary timepiece with a micro-generator and an integrated timing machine that enabled wearers to track the mechanical precision of their watches and adjust them to compensate for small environmental irregularities.

The idea for the Urwerk EMC SR-71 came from Dreamland, an aerospace and lifestyle brand created by watch designer Jason Sarkoyan and aeronautical engineer Dr. Roman Sperl, who acquired genuine SR-71 fuselage pieces, which are made from a special titanium alloy that contains aluminum, vanadium, silicon, iron, and molybdenum (oh, and speaking of this special titanium, it was purchased by off-shore dummy corporations set up by Lockheed, as the only place to purchase the material to build the plane to spy on the Soviets was from the soviets — I think I might dedicate tomorrow’s post on Patreon to the SR-71, because it’s that cool of a story). The SR-71 fuselage pieces were melted down, and the special titanium alloy was reworked to create the folding crank handle for the EMC SR-71’s built-in generator.

The EMC SR-71 comes in a titanium and stainless steel case that has some unique and rather large dimensions. It’s 47.55mm wide and 49.57mm long, with a thickness of 17.58mm. The case gets a matte blasted finish, but the crank on the side is left untreated to not just create contrast, but also… it’s made out of SR-71 fuselage… You want to see as much of it as possible.

There is no dial to speak of, only for apertures cut into the titanium front. In the bottom-right corner you’ll find the hours and minutes, with the seconds right above that. In the top-left corner, you’ll find the performance indicator. The last indication is for the power reserve indication, underneath an arched sapphire crystal and with a simple red-to-white scale.

Just like other EMC models, the new Urwerk EMC SR-71 is powered by the brand’s in-house Caliber UR-EMC manual-wind movement, which is essentially a traditional Swiss lever escapement combined with an integrated timing machine that is powered by tiny hand-crank generator. It beats at 4Hz and has a power reserve of 70 hours. The truly special part of the movement is the ability to measure the accuracy of its timekeeping and then adjust it. WInd up the crank to charge a capacitor that powers the performance indicator. An internal optical sensor measures the movement’s timekeeping against a 6,000,000 Hz electronic oscillator, with the data presented on the upper left-hand register. Owners can fine-tune the accuracy of their watches accordingly by using a small screw that is located along the rim of the display caseback.

This is an incredible watch and if you told me I could chose one Urwerk to own, it would be this one. Not that I will own one. If the 10-piece limited nature doesn’t stop me, then the CHF 150,000 price tag surely will. See more on the Urwerk website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

1/

A review of the Two New Colorways Of The Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical 38mm

2/

Hands-On with the Kudoke Infinity

3/

A review of the Zenith Defy Extreme Diver

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The BWG Isaria is an example of pure individuality

The blend of sharpness and roundness that the case establishes is expanded upon throughout the dial. A flowing wave pattern etched into the dial plate brings a soothing undertone, while the pointed diamond hour markers and sword hands reflect the harsh angles of the bezel facets. The indices at 12, 3, 6 and 9 are all applied for a bit of extra definition and depth, while the others are printed, but all have been given a generous application of Swiss Super-LumiNova. The integration of the date window has also been done pretty cleanly, cutting the 3 o’clock diamond in half to become a simple triangle.

Read the whole review on Time + Tide

⏲️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

• Confidential documents show that Xiao Jianhua, a corrupt investor tied to China’s political elite, backed the country’s most successful and revered entrepreneur. This is the story of the billionaire criminal who secretly profited off Jack Ma’s deals.

• Errol Morris is surely one of the greatest documentary filmmakers of all time. And as a person who has been called a liar, a trickster, and a manipulator because of how he chooses to illustrate real life events, he is the perfect person to tell us whether we should be afraid of generative AI in documentaries.

• At the start of 2024, Kosovo joined Europe’s visa-free Schengen zone, allowing Kosovars to travel freely around the European Union without a visa. It’s a big change, full of opportunities. Lale Arikoglu writes a refreshing piece for Condé Nast Traveler about Kosovo’s club culture and electronic music scene, and the energy and sense of possibility felt on dance floors across Pristina, 25 years after the war.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I was just about to be over restomod cars. Go look at all the new cars shown at Monterrey Car Week and 80% of them will be 40 year old cars updated to be modern. Now, I don’t mind nostalgia, but when it’s the only thing we do, it gets tedious. And yet… Just look at what they did with this Porsche 928. It’s stunning.

💵Pre-loved precision

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-Vuk