The eighth special edition watch from Bremont pays tribute to Concorde’s upcoming 50th anniversary

By Chris Hall

This is the Bremont Supersonic. It’s an eight-day hand wound watch, limited to 500 pieces and designed to honour the memory of the world’s most famous supersonic airliner, which marks 50 years since its maiden flight next year. (Russia did also construct a supersonic passenger jet, the Tupolev Tu-144, but by all accounts it was a failure, completing just 102 flights in 15 years). 

The watch is Bremont’s first hand-wound watch, which might come as something of a surprise given the brand’s focus on engaging, hands-on, practical watches, but there you go. The movement in question is adapted from the La Joux-Perret calibre 7381, a twin-barrel movement also used by Baume & Mercier in the Baumatic. Bremont has worked with La Joux-Perret before, using an automatic calibre based on the 6901 in its Wright Flyer limited edition four years ago.  
It’s not clear why this was chosen to be the moment Bremont embraced hand-winding, but it denied the brand the chance for its usual practice on limited editions of embedding a small fraction of sourced material into the automatic rotor. Fear not, however, there is still a sliver of aluminium from Concorde Alpha Bravo embedded within the watch. And the absence of a rotor has afforded Bremont the chance to introduce a stencil outline of Concorde’s silhouette to the move...