When you're looking for a serious, well designed watch that you can genuinely beat the shit out of, certain marques rise to the top of mind. Tutima, which has a long history of making tool watches in Glashütte, Germany, is one such brand.
Tutima's latest offering, the Grand Flieger Airport, builds upon their aviation heritage, albeit via a thoroughly modern approach. Available in both chronograph and three-hander form, the Grand Flieger Airport features a 43mm steel case, a bi-directional 12-hour bezel available for the first time in ceramic, and color-coordinated dials and textile straps with deployant clasps. Both models also feature screw-down crowns, anti-reflective sapphire crystals above both the dial and case back, and an impressive 200m of water resistance. All hands, indices, and 12 o'clock bezel markers are coated in Super-LumiNova.
The three-hand model, which features the Tutima cal. 330 (based on the ETA 2836), has a day-date display and sparse, highly legible dial. Handsome and oversized, it's certainly a cool-looking watch, but to my mind, the real star of the show here is the chronograph: featuring the Tutima cal. 310, it's adorned with a day-date display at 3 o'clock, a 12-hour counter at 6 o'clock with red demarcations, a running seconds counter at 9 o'clock and a 30-minute counter at 12 o'clock. (This movement, of course, is based on the famed ETA/Valjoux 7750, which powered some of the coolest chronographs of the last 40 years.)
Both models are available with cool green or blue "dégradé" dials (they fade from the colored to black at the outer edges of the dial) and Cordura straps or a steel bracelet. Prices are $2,500 (strap) to $2,900 (bracelet) for the three-hander or $3,900 (strap) to $4,300 (bracelet) for the chronograph.
