Baltic's New Tricompax Is a '70s-Inspired Stunner
Welcome to Dialed In, Esquire's weekly column bringing you horological happenings and the most essential news from the watch world since March 2020.
French watch brand Baltic's reputation for affordable but well-thought-out and excellently finished watches that nod to the golden age of the tool watch has propelled the brand into a solid niche of its own in the past five years. The only downside: It has made getting hold of one of its special editions an exercise in extreme tenacity, as they have a nasty habit of selling out almost immediately.
This week (in under two days, to be precise), the brand launches its first-ever three-counter chronograph (or Tricompax) in an attractive, retro-looking collaboration with a racing organization that you may not have heard of yet. Based, like Baltic, in Paris, Peter Auto is a company that organizes track events for iconic sports cars, giving owners the opportunity to put their precious motors regularly through their paces rather than stick them in a glass case like expensive knickknacks.
In watchmaking, the vintage craze has driven watch brands—new and old—to play with notions of vintage to give new watches a bit of retro flair over the past decade. Some of these have been more successful than others. Well, Baltic was born out of that vintage urge but, unlike many, the brand has already proven that it has a keen eye for details that require no fauxtina to win us over.
With sporty looks that positively shout the 1970s, the new Tricompax is a true panda, of course, with beige giving a subtly vintage vibe that a clean white dial would not. But it’s the orange chrono second hand and the orange and yellow accents jumping off the matte black sub-dials that really give the watch its funky retro appeal. The simple flat-link steel bracelet also harks to the '70s without rubbing your nose in it. In addition to that, the watch comes with a gray-brown calf leather strap included and—get this—not one but two dashboard stopwatches designed in a style to echo the watch.
As a Tricompax, the new chronograph is Baltic's most complicated watch yet. The Sellita SW510 movement's added complexity pushes the price of this watch to a place that's double Baltic's traditional sub-$1,000 range, but that's not likely—given all the included extras and the fact that it is, on its own, a stunning watch—to deter Baltic's fan base from snapping it up when it goes live on the brand's website at precisely 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, August 26.
By the way: If you're wondering why it's called a Tricompax, well, it's not strictly about the obvious three sub-dials. "Tricompax" in fact refers to the three chronograph complications, which include the central orange second counter, the minute counter at three o'clock, and the 12-hour counter at six o'clock—just the thing for timing an all-nighter on the track.
You Might Also Like
