When I first heard about New Britain watches I thought it was a brand trying to cash in on Britain’s magnificent summer of sport, where for 14 hallucinogenic days Britain kept winning one gold medal after another. Indeed, for a while it was a Britain not spiralling out of control with record trade and budget deficits; a swollen bureaucracy; and record emigration but a Britain renewed.
However, it’s not about that at all. New Britain watches detected a gap in the market for a good quality mechanical watch at the sub $5000 mark, and they’ve produced a new collection of watches that take their design and technical cues from Swiss watches worth a great deal more.
An American brand, the inspiration behind the watches is 1950s California cool; they;re all about the freedom of the open road, with a Vincent Black Lightning motorcycle powering its way full pelt across the salt flats, and generally retro stuff that the History Channel’s American Pickers would find awesomely desirable.
The watchmakers have not merely opted for order by numbers cases and casually slapped in un-retouched movements. The watches are hand assembled in Switzerland, the Unitas 6498/1, movement, used in similarly priced watches, and Panerai watches too are is finished to an extremely high level. The bridges have been sand-blasted the bridges, there are bevelled edges with a high-polish finish and high polished screws too. The movements are then manually wound and tuned to COSC standards, The see-through caseback allows a glimpse of the inner workings.
Quality is present through and through; we are told the chunky 45mm cases are made of a single block of AISI316L high grade steel, there’s a retro coin-edged bevel, and the dials are reminiscent of vintage motorbike speedometers.
Each of the three watches in the collection are mounted on hand-sewn brown leather straps with hypoallergenic lining.
And the price? A California cool $3,200.00
