Breitling is currently reinventing itself, evident in their latest offering, the magnificent Breitling Chronograph Navitimer 8. Baroque Access finds out all the details
Breitling’s latest offering, the Chronograph Navitimer 8, follows the brand’s signature Chronograph Navitimer collection; while the brand’s Chronograph timepiece itself has been a favorite with pilots and dedicated aeronautical enthusiasts since 1952. The first in the new collection, the legendary Navitimer 1, combines a technical and original design and features Manufacture Breitling Caliber 01, iconic for its reliability and performance.
The brand’s latest iteration, the Breitling Chronograph Navitimer 8, is even better than its predecessors. Since the historic brand acquired new ownership, its collections are being reformed, resulting in timepieces with less complexity. The Navitimer 8 collection is the first to be released – a simpler, more classic take on the original.
No, the Navitimer 8 is not the eighth in the collection; it refers back to 1938 when Willy Breitling established the ‘Huit Aviation Department’ (‘huit’ is eight in French) that produced cockpit clocks with an 8-day power reserve. The current team at Breitling has used some of the fundamental design elements of these cockpit clocks in the new 2018 Navitimer 8 collection. Hence the name.
The Navitimer 8 B01 is the leader of the pack, a 43mm timepiece with either a black or a blue dial in a stainless steel case, or a bronze dial in a pink gold case. All of the Navitimer 8 B01 models have sub-dials in a contrasting tone to the dial; this shows the use of an in-house movement, the B01 with its 70-hour power reserve.
You’ll find the elements of the 1940s cockpit clocks evident underneath the convex sapphire crystal with its double anti-reflective coating. The most obvious is the typeface, which is, like the cockpit clocks, in Arabic numerals, plus there’s the railway minute track with its small triangular markers that show every five minutes. In addition, there’s the notched bezel, which turns bi-directionally and has an arrow mark.
This is not the only Navitimer 8 timepiece in the collection – there are five in all, including the Navitimer 8 Chronograph with Valjoux movement, the Navitimer 8 Automatic which features a date at 6 o’clock, the Navitimer 8 Day & Date which has an additional day window at 12 o’clock and, finally, the Navitimer 8 Unitime, which features a manufacture world time movement.
