longines and perrelet chronographs

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LONGINES AND PERRELET CHRONOGRAPHS
L
ongines’s Grande Vitesse watch has a lot to
offer: it’s well crafted, its mechanics are
state of the art, and its chronograph operates
with high torque and equally high precision.
What more could you want in a
high-end mechanical sports watch? If you
answered “more individuality,” you might
be more inclined toward the other timepiece
we review here, Perrelet’s Big Date.
Whereas Longines watches are sold and
worn all over the world, Perrelet — named after the watchmaking
pioneer who invented the first pocket watch with a rotary
winding mechanism around the year 1777 and developed the pedometer
a few years later — has a much smaller production run.
The exclusivity of this historical brand is reflected in the price of
its new chronograph, which contains Perrelet’s self-winding Caliber
P-091 and sells for $4,650. That’s considerably more than
Longines charges for its Grande Vitesse chronograph ($2,350).
Its balance oscillates at the same rate as the one in Perrelet’s
watch, which boasts a big date display with two windows, an exclusive
Perrelet rotor with built-in crystal, and an alligator-skin
strap with a double-folding clasp. On the other hand, the Grande
Vitesse makes a good impression with its metal bracelet, doublefolding
clasp and genuine chronograph movement.
The Big Date radiates an aura of conservative elegance, suggesting
that the designers were not overly interested in experimentation.
The crown, push-pieces and double-folding clasp are
reliable in their ease of operation. The brightly luminous hands
150 WatchTime December 2008
The Longines’s interesting
details include a red
stop/start button, checkerboard
pattern for the
return-to-zero button,
and the winged hourglass
logo on the crown.
ROAD