A Swiss brand known for sporty designs and reasonable prices, even for its watches with in-house mechanical movements, Alpina has released an attractive world-time watch, which is both user-friendly, and wallet-friendly, called the Alpina Worldtimer Manufacture.
The watch, produced in a limited edition of 8,888 pieces, is part of the Alpina Aviation collection, which was developed in a cross-marketing collaboration with Cessna, a leading manufacturer of business jets and other light and midsize aircraft; and PrivatAir, an international provider of chartered airline service for VIPs. It contains Alpina’s in-house Caliber AL-718, based on the AL-710 movement used in the brand’s Startimer Manufacture model.
The timepiece’s highlight feature is its easy-to-use world-time function. It features an outer rotating ring inscribed with the names of 24 world cities, representing the 24 major time zones, and an inner rotating ring with hour-markers numbered 1 to 24. To use the function, you first set the time in your current location, which is displayed on standard hour and minute hands. To do this, simply turn the crown to move the outer disk until the city representing your home time zone is at 12 o’clock. (In the photos, the “home” city is Geneva.) You can then check the times in different time zones by consulting how the cities on the outer disk match up with the hours on the inner disk. In the photo, “New York” is at 5, meaning it is 5:07 a.m. in New York. “Moscow” lines up with 13, meaning that it is 13:07 hours, or 1:07 p.m., in Moscow, and so on.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Alpina Worldtimer Manufacture is its price — just $3,450, substantially lower than most world-time watches in this class with an in-house mechanical movement. As a further bonus to aviation enthusiasts, the watch is packaged alongside a Cessna Citation Mustang scale model in PrivatAir livery. More specs on the watch are below the photos, which can be enlarged with a click.
Technical characteristics:
Movement: Manufacture Caliber AL-718, automatic; hand-type date indicator and world-time function adjustable by the crown; 26 jewels; 42-hour power reserve; decorated with perlage & circular côtes de Genève; black-PVD-coated Alpina rotor
Functions: hours, minutes, seconds, date indication, world-time display
Case and strap: Brushed and polished stainless steel two-piece case, diameter = 44 mm, convex sapphire crystal, sapphire exhibition caseback, water-resistant to 100 meters; black crococalf strap with stainless steel folding buckle and water-resistant inner lining
Dial and hands: Black dial with luminous indices and numerals; white, luminous hands; date counter at 6 o’clock; 24-hour disk with day-night indication; city disc with 24 cities
Limited edition of 8,888 pieces, delivered in a special gift box with scale model of a Cessna plane
Receive all the news, features and reviews from WatchTime for free! Sign up to our free weekly newsletter and get all the news delivered to your inbox.
This looks surprisingly similar to the new IWC Pilot Worldtimer. Fully 1/3 the price of the IWC, but I wonder if there\'s some design \"thievery\" going on here....