Glashütte Original Senator Sixties Panorama Date

This Spring the German watch brand introduced the new Glashütte Original Senator Sixties Panorama Date, providing the original vintage-styled watch with their trademark Panorama Date complication.

The Sixties. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Beatles. Decolonization and the Vietnam War. The hippies and the mini-skirt. Also, bikini. The British Motor Corporation makes a fortune on the first Mini compact cars: the first compacts that offered not only affordable price, but also comfort, superior handling and performance. Ford makes a fortune on the Mustang. Mao’s Red Guards harass and practically annihilate Chinese intellectual elite, while the Soviets bring a man into Space. Hitchcock films the Psycho and the Birds. Yes, those were the days.

I am 36 right now and was not present at the time, but, by the enthusiastic way eyewitnesses describe it, the decade was much better than the Eighties.

No wonder that I liked the, err, original Senator Sixties so much. And it seems that I like the Glashütte Original’s Senator Sixties Panorama Date even best.

The secret is the “Panorama Date” part of the name. Although clearly stripping the watch of its “vintage” adjective, the complication builds a kind of a bridge that unites the latest vintage-style Senator Sixties with GO’s “modern” collection, most of which also feature the panorama date display as well as the German brand’s trademark off-centered hour and minute display area.

The Panorama Date is GO’s proprietary complication that features a pair of coaxial and coplanar disks with the smaller inner disk bearing numerals 0, 1, 2, 3 and the larger outer disk featuring numerals from 0 to 9. Thanks to its compact design, the complication allows the watchmaker to place the big date window virtually at any place of their liking, not only at the outer part of the dial, like it usually happens with standard movements from ETA and their numerous clones and ahem derivative works.

Some commenters were completely flabbergasted with the design (or, rather, with the standard typeface used to display the date that, to their disgust, contradicted the font family of the stylized 3, 6, 9 and 12 Arabic numerals.) To me, and I am totally impartial here, the choice is organically balanced with the “Glashutte I/SA” logo placed right atop the date window.

Delivered in a mid-size 42 mm x 12.4 mm stainless steel case, the watch comes equipped with a choice of two –black and silvered– dials.

The black dial features white gold hands and hour indexes as well as diamond-cut hour markers and white on black date window. The Arabic numerals are painted in white. The one with the silvered dial comes with black Arabic numerals, rose gold hands, diamond-cut hour markers and the date in black on white.

The watch’s sapphire case back allows a terrific view at the Caliber 39-47 manufacture automatic movement. And, believe me, it is a real pleasure to regard the mechanism, which is decorated with truly German ice-cold elegance.

At a recommended price of around $8000, this one is a truly must-have for just about any watch aficionado.

Photos: Glashütte Original

Glashütte Original Senator Sixties Panorama Date watch specification:

Price range: $8000
Movement: GO 39-47, automatic, in-house, flat spring, Incabloc shock protection, polished steel parts, Glashütte three-quarter plate with stripe finish, skeletonized rotor with 21-ct gold oscillation weight, swan-neck fine adjustment, 28,800 vph, 30.95 mm in diameter, 5.9 mm in height
Complications: Panorama Date at 6 o’clock
Power reserve: 40 hours
Case material: Stainless steel
Bezel material: Stainless steel
Case shape: Round
Case size: 42 mm
Case height: 12.4 mm
Dial: Black (ref. 39-47-03-02-04) or Silvered (ref. 39-47-01-02-04)
Numerals: Arabic
Hands: Rose (Silvered dial) or White (Black dial) gold with luminous spots on the hours
Water resistance: 30 m
Strap: Black Louisiana Alligator leather strap
Crystal: Sapphire
Case back: Sapphire