Girard-Perregaux 1966 WW.TC

The new Girard-Perregaux 1966 WW.TC – World-Wide Time Control – presented at SIHH in January 2017, changes everything with respect to the previous version. The chronograph function has been removed, and the second crown at 9 o’clock, absent in the 2013 version, has been reintroduced and provides a distinctive look to the watch. The dial has been completely redesigned and now is superbly legible. Even the date window has been removed.

User-friendly

It’s a world time watch that is beautifully simple to use. The crown at 9 o’clock is used to set up the watch for the time zone you’re in (so in the photo above it’s set up for Paris) by rotating the city ring at the outer edge of the dial. The 24-hour ring, divided into daytime and night-time sectors, rotates once every 24 hours, so that at any time, you can see what time it is in any of the 24 time zones. The crown at 3 o’clock is used to adjust hours and minutes, and the 24-hour ring follows this automatically. Both the city ring and the time can be adjusted forwards and backwards.

New simplified dial

The WW.TC series was first introduced in 2000 and combined the world time function with a chronograph. It remained pretty much the same up until 2013, with variants in dial colour, strap, bracelet and so forth. They all featured a very busy dial, with small chronograph subdials, and a date window at 1.30 whose diagonal position always looked a bit uncomfortable. The new version shows a very contemporary design spirit based on the “less is more” concept, and the dial now looks beautifully uncluttered.

The 2013 version of the Girard-Perregaux 1966 WW.TC

Case and strap

It’s a compact watch at 40 mm diameter and 12 mm thickness, perfect for just about any occasion. Water resistance is the standard 30 metres, 3 bar. It has an opaline silver-toned dial, and leaf-shaped hands. The watch has an alligator leather strap or a steel bracelet, with a folding clasp in steel or pink gold according to the version.

In-house movement

The watch is powered by the in-house self-winding GP03300-0022/0027 movement, based on the GP03300 which is fundamental in Girard-Perregaux’s range. The base movement is very slim at 3.2 mm, leaving lots of space to put on an additional module for the world time complication, bringing thickness to 5.71 mm and a total of 248 components. The balance runs at 28,800 vibrations per hour, 4 Hertz. Its unidirectional winding system has a rotor that rotates freely in the non-winding direction, and this creates a faintly audible noise and feel that has become a feature appreciated by wearers. Power reserve is 46 hours.

Prices and references

The Girard-Perregaux 1966 WW.TC is available in three versions. Reference 49557-52-131-BB6C is in pink gold with alligator leather strap, price 24,200 Swiss francs, €24,300. 49557-11-132-BB6C is in steel with alligator leather strap, price 12,500 Swiss francs, and 49557-11-132-11A is in steel with a steel bracelet, 13,200 Swiss francs. More information from the Girard-Perregaux website.