Breitling’s ultra-masculine Super Avenger model has been offered in numerous variations over the years, most recently with a military-style 24-hour dial, but up until now it has been one of the few collections without a Breitling-made engine under its hood. That changes with the release of the new Super Avenger 01 Boutique Edition, the first Super Avenger outfitted with the brand’s in-house Caliber 01, and limited to 100 pieces, and available only, as its name would suggest, at the 60 Breitling boutiques worldwide.

While there is very little that could be called subtle about this weighty, 48-mm timepiece, the details denoting the Super Avenger 01 as a limited edition qualify, namely the red “Edition Limitée” inscription above the 6 o’clock subdial, and the red sections of track on the periphery of the 3 o’clock subdial. The dial, in Breitling’s hallmark “Volcano Black,” features the familiar three-register arrangement, with tone-on-tone, snailed subdials at 3 o’clock, for the 30-minute chrono counter, 6 o’clock for the 12-hour chrono counter, and 9 o’clock for the running seconds. Picking up the details of the dial, the central chronograph seconds hand is also in red, and tallies elapsed times to 1/4 second. The date appears in a window at 4:30; the hour and minute hands and the applied hour indices are all suitably large and legible, with luminescent coating.
Ticking beneath a special caseback engr...