Grand Seiko is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its Spring Drive movement this year with three freshly designed sports models. For those unfamiliar, Spring Drive is a groundbreaking movement originally produced by Seiko in 1999, which maintains extremely precise timing by seamlessly combining a traditional mechanical mainspring with a quartz regulator and an electromagnetic rotor break. Together these elements form the ?Tri-Synchro Regulator? heart of the Spring Drive movements, which, when placed in combination with Grand Seiko?s renowned ability for movement finishing and watch design, has resulted in some of the most positively viewed watches on the market today.
These three new models ? two chronograph GMTs and a time-only piece ? feature a refreshed case design for the Grand Seiko brand, and work to advance the collection to the forefront of luxury sports watches.
 
The first of these anniversary models is the 18k rose gold Spring Drive Chronograph GMT 9R96 (ref. SBGC230). The 44.5-mm watch uses a unique faceted case design (specially finished with the brand?s Zaratsu-style polishing) with two prominent chronograph pushers and a LumiBrite accented black GMT bezel. Beneath the dual-curved sapphire glass is a deep red dial to match the crocodile leather securing it to the wrist. It uses an outer racing minute track common to chronographs, along with large applied indices, a 3 o?clock date window, power reserve indicator, and three sub-dials for running seconds,...