The Panerai Luminor — a watch built upon the foundation of early 20th-Century wartime dive watches worn by Italian naval commandos, and for decades virtually unknown to civilian watch enthusiasts — was finally unveiled to the public in 1993, and swiftly became one of the most era-defining watches of that decade. Panerai has expanded the Luminor into a broad, diverse collection in the years since, establishing it as the unquestioned flagship of the Florentine-Swiss watchmaker’s collection. But for many watch enthusiasts, the Luminor’s imposing size (44mm in the core models but as large as 47mm in the more vintage-appropriate pieces) was a barrier to owning one or even trying one on, even if they were attracted to the brand’s iconic military-chic design elements. This week, Panerai has answered the call of this huge potential audience with the launch of three new references — PAM01710, PAM01711, and PAM07114 — that resurrect the fondly remembered 1990s Luminor case in a more versatile 42mm diameter.
All three watches retain the Luminor’s bold, rugged presence, including the hallmark, patented crown-protecting bridge device on the right side of the case, but in a more compact package. The lines and edges, more sharp and angular in the larger models, have been smoothed out and reduced to a more streamlined silhouette that is intended to be more widely wearable for a greater range of wrist sizes. The case thickness is 13.8mm — not as svelte as the 10.5mm of the more understated Luminor Due, but slightly downsized from the 15mm of the 44mm Luminor Marina models — but maintains the impressive 500-meter water-resistance that Panerai has recently adopted as the standard for the series.
The dial evokes the classic look of Panerai’s well-known, two-layered “sandwich dials” without actually using that complex construction. On these 42mm watches, the dial is a single plate with each graphic element printed in succession in different colors. The Super-LumiNova (ivory-colored in daylight, bright green in the dark) is applied last, creating a subtle raised effect for graphics like the numerals and indexes and allowing them to glow brightly in darkness, along with the central hour and minute hands and the running seconds hand at 9 o’clock. The latter is an element that calls back to the watch’s original users, navy frogmen who used the separate seconds display to determine at a glance whether their watch was running.
Ticking behind the screwed, solid caseback is Panerai’s manufacture Caliber P.980, which boasts a three-day power reserve and incorporates a traversing balance wheel bridge that enhances the mechanism’s stability and timekeeping accuracy. Conceived and built at Panerai’s factory in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, it is equipped with a hacking seconds function, another utilitarian feature held over from earlier versions of the watch, used in the field by military operators who required precise time synchronization to successfully execute their missions. The openworked rotor has a blue “Officine Panerai” engraving and horizontal brushed finishing on the plates, and the entire movement has been tested in six positions to ensure its chronometric performance.
The three Luminor 42mm models offer a range of colorways and two different case material executions: The PAM01710 is the one most evocative of classical vintage Panerai, with a brushed and polished steel case, a matte black dial, and a beige canvas strap. The PAM01711 has its own distinctive military aesthetic, with a dark green dial and green canvas strap. More avant-garde in its appearance is the PAM01714, with a matte blue dial, a matching blue canvas strap, and a black DLC coating on its steel case. All of these sturdy canvas straps, with leather reinforcements around the holes, taper from 22mm to 20mm and fasten to the wrist with Panerai’s trapezoidal buckle, which has the same finishing as the case.
Prices on the new 42mm Panerai Luminor models are $6,700 for the black-dialed PAM01710 and green-dialed PAM01711, and $7,700 for the blue-dialed PAM01714 with black DLC case. More info on panerai.com
