Perrelet is an interesting manufacturer known for the use of the automatic winding rotor on the dial side often to showcase animated dials. For summer 2022, they are releasing a new wristwatch in their iconic Turbile line with a multi-colour peek-a-boo dial and a case in carbon fibre.

New: Perrelet Turbine Rainbow

The Perrelet Turbine Rainbow retails for EUR 4,950 and is a limited edition of 50 pieces on pre-order from 15 August 2022.

Commentary

Perrelet is a historical name, but one which is perhaps at the periphery of many collector’s vision. They trace their roots to Abraham Louis Perrelet who founded the firm in 1777, and is credited for being the inventor of the self winding watch. Perrelet even sold some of the watches to his contemporary A.L. Breguet in 1780, who improved upon the mechanism in his own version of the design, calling his watches “perpetuelles”, the French word for perpetual. The house claims to have been active throughout, but largely unknown until it returned to visibility in 1990 with a concept known as the dial side rotor. Perrelet produced the first double rotor model in 1995 in collaboration with Master Watchmaker Paul Gerber. The firm holds a patent for it. This watch featured a single rotor visible on the dial side, and a second one below. In 2004, the maison was acquired by the Festina Group, and with it the technical access to movement manufacture from sister company Soprod.

The movement from one of the early Perrelet automatic winding movements, showing the full sized semi-circular rotor.

In 2009, Perrelet presented the Turbine. This was a commercial success, taking inspiration from aviation and basing the design of the dial side rotor on the jet engine turbine. The movement is still a double rotor, but the dial side is designed to look like a propeller of the jet engine’s turbine.

Today’s novelty is an extension to the Turbine line. Now with the blades of the front rotor revealing and hiding the multi-coloured sub-dial below. This sub-dial is made up of many dots making patches of colour in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. An effect which is vaguely similar to the works of American painter Jackson Pollock.

The rainbow theme is carried on with the muti-colour indices – Arabic for even and bar for odd going from red to violet in a progression like they appear in a rainbow. The indices have SuperLumiNova applied in a matching colour. The hour and minute hands are white and the central seconds hand red.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NDHwIT51Uhg%3Ffeature%3Doembed

But also of interest is the case, which is in carbon fibre with a stainless steel bezel and case back in black PVD to match the dark tones of the carbon. The case is an updated design of the regular steel Turbine cases, and has a higher water resistance rating of 100m instead of 50m in the steel variants.

And the movement is the new P-331-MH caliber, which is an in-house manufacture automatic movement. Perrelet embarked on this self sufficient model and manufactures the entire movement themselves, including the regulating organ. The movement not only has COSC certification, but have also passed the more stringent Chronofiable certification issued by Laboratory Dubois of La Chaux-de-Fonds.

In terms of pricing, Perrelet has set the Turbine Rainbow to retail at EUR 4,950 which is a small premium over the black PVD steel version in the Turbine Regular which goes for EUR 4,580. Keeping in mind that the Turbine Rainbow has a carbon fibre case and is a limited edition of 50 pieces.