Nomos Glashütte Autobahn
Engineered for life in the fast lane
The fine watch industry typically likes to keep itself to itself: the secrets of design and engineering kept behind firmly closed doors. But recently, a culture of sharing has started to emerge, with many of the big brands welcoming in third-party creatives. Nomos Glashütte, the German watchmaker known for its delicately modernist aesthetic has done just that this year with the Autobahn, created in partnership with Werner Aisslinger and Tina Bunyaprasit of
Studio Aisslinger, the design company noted for its furniture and interiors.
“Nomos’s watches always appealed to me,” says Aisslinger. “The company produces beautiful timepieces, combining traditional watchmaking from Glashütte with contemporary design from Berlin to create something unique.”
This is not the first driving (or driving-inspired) watch to be created, but it’s a Nomos, which means it’s unlike one you’ll have seen before. There’s the characteristic bold, block colours, the sans-serif digits, the impossibly thin hands, but at 41mm it’s bigger than most Nomos watches, plus it features big splashes of “lume”, which give the dial the look of a dashboard speedometer in the dark.
“Autobahn reminds me of a vintage sports car,” says Aisslinger, “it conveys a feeling of the past into the here and now, offering durability and outstanding mechanics. Vintage cars from the Seventies and Eighties, in particular their shapes and finishings, fascinate me. And I love speed!”
In addition to its hyper-clean looks — and the new in-house DUW 6101 automatic calibre with 42-hour power reserve — it’s the little details that set the Autobahn apart. Up close you see the face is concave, designed to mimic the angle of a race track. And the date, displayed with the day before and the day after (like an odometer), can be adjusted forward and backward. “Working with Nomos Glashütte, I didn’t want to create a watch that would simply blend in among the rest of the models,” Aisslinger says, “but rather try something new. This model may not appear to be typical for Nomos Glashütte at first glance, and yet on closer inspection it has the brand’s signature in its design DNA.” Charlie Teasdale
£3,800; nomos-glashuette.com