Description
Girard-Perregaux has put a tourbillon into a 39 mm steel Laureato and kept the watch 10 mm thick. The Laureato Fifty Tourbillon Micro-Rotor arrives in two executions — reference 99116-11-3528-1CM with a translucent blue Grand Feu enamel dial over white gold, and reference 99116-11-3615-1CM with a solid 18k rose-toned gold dial — priced at US$100,000 and US$95,600 respectively, and neither is a limited edition.
This is a different watch from the time-only Laureato Fifty models that share the collection name: where those run the calibre GP4800, this one carries the automatic GP8410, a micro-rotor movement with a one-minute tourbillon at six o'clock. It is the most technically ambitious steel Laureato the brand has made, and the choice to build it in steel rather than precious metal is the most interesting decision in it.
Design
The case is 39 mm wide and 10 mm thick in brushed and polished stainless steel, following the octagonal-bezel-on-round-case geometry that has defined the Laureato since 1975. Sapphire crystals front and back carry anti-reflective treatment. The integrated steel bracelet is brushed and polished to match, and closes on a triple-folding clasp with a hidden micro-adjustment system offering up to 4 mm of on-the-wrist sizing.
Both dials are built on a Clous de Paris hobnail ground. The first covers a white-gold base in translucent blue Grand Feu enamel so the texture reads through the glaze; the second is a solid gold dial in a warm rose tone. Applied white-gold indices and hands carry luminescent inserts with a blue emission. The tourbillon aperture at six o'clock is spanned by a white-gold bridge over a lyre-shaped cage — Girard-Perregaux's shorthand reference to the Three Gold Bridges it has been building since the 19th century. Through the caseback, the platinum micro-rotor sits under an arrow-shaped pink-gold bridge, with the movement's own bridges finished in white gold and decorated with the same Clous de Paris motif as the dial.
Specifications
- References: 99116-11-3528-1CM (blue Grand Feu enamel dial), 99116-11-3615-1CM (solid gold dial)
- Case diameter: 39 mm
- Case thickness: 10 mm
- Case material: stainless steel, brushed and polished
- Crystal: anti-reflective sapphire, front and back
- Water resistance: 50 m
- Dial: Clous de Paris ground; translucent blue Grand Feu enamel over white gold, or solid 18k rose-toned gold
- Movement: GP8410, in-house, automatic with off-centred micro-rotor in platinum and pink gold
- Movement dimensions: 30.4 mm x 6.1 mm
- Components / jewels: 207 / 31
- Frequency: 21,600 vph (3 Hz)
- Power reserve: 72 hours
- Complications: one-minute tourbillon with lyre-shaped cage
- Bracelet: integrated stainless steel, triple-folding clasp with 4 mm micro-adjustment
- Limited edition: no
- Price: US$100,000 (blue enamel) / US$95,600 (gold dial)
- Availability: Girard-Perregaux boutiques and retailers
What's Exciting
Ten millimetres is the number to hold onto. Integrated-bracelet sports watches tend to thicken the moment a tourbillon goes in, and a 39 mm case at 10 mm thick with an automatic tourbillon under it is a genuinely difficult piece of construction. The micro-rotor is how it is done: setting the winding mass inside the movement plane rather than above it saves the height a full rotor would cost, and using platinum for it recovers the winding efficiency that a smaller mass would otherwise lose.
The steel case is the argument, though. At US$95,600 to US$100,000 this is not a cheap watch, but a tourbillon in a precious-metal case at this level of finishing would usually sit well past that, and Girard-Perregaux has spent the material budget on the parts you actually look at — a Grand Feu enamel dial over hobnail guilloche, solid gold on the alternative, white-gold bridges inside — rather than on the case. That is an unusual and rather confident allocation, and it is the kind of value-for-money engineering decision that separates GP from the neighbours it is priced against.
History
The Laureato launched in 1975, three years after the Royal Oak and a year before the Nautilus, and it was unusual in its own right: the original was a quartz watch with an in-house Girard-Perregaux movement, from a brand that had done serious work on high-frequency quartz regulation. The octagonal bezel set on a round case with an integrated bracelet has survived every revision since, including the collection's fifth-generation redesign in 2016.
The Laureato Fifty sub-collection marks the model's fiftieth anniversary. The gold-bridge language on this watch reaches back further still, to the Tourbillon with Three Gold Bridges that Constant Girard developed in the 1860s and 1870s and which won the brand its reputation at the international exhibitions of the period — the bridge over the tourbillon here is a deliberate compression of that idea into a steel sports watch.
