Perrelet Turbine watches

The Perrelet Turbine has a second rotor on the dial side: a 12-blade propeller modelled on a jet-engine turbine. Perrelet presented the first Turbine in 2009. It builds on the brand's trademark design, a rotor on both the back of the movement and the dial, which Perrelet first used in its Double Rotor model of 1995, five years after the brand returned in 1990. The name comes from Abraham-Louis Perrelet, born in Le Locle, who invented a self-winding mechanism around 1777. The Festina Group acquired Perrelet in 2004.

On the 2009 Turbines the blades spun with the automatic rotor that winds the movement, the Perrelet P-181, visible through a sapphire caseback. In 2011 Perrelet revised the case with the Turbine XL, and that case design stayed. The brand has also made a Turbine Chronograph and a Turbine Pilot. The 2015 Turbine Skeleton drops the rear of the dial, so the turbine spins in front of the visible movement, a P-381 automatic built on a Soprod base. Its hands and hour markers sit above the blades.

Size is what separates the variants. The XXS (A2057/A) is 38 mm and the XS (A2042/AA) 41 mm; the Turbine (A1064/5) and the Skeleton (A3038/1) are 44 mm; the Diver, Yacht and Chrono (A3036/2) are 47 mm; the Pilot and the XL (A1050/1) are 48 mm. The Chrono stands 16 mm tall. Steel is the usual case metal, but the Skeleton pairs it with rose gold and the XL with titanium. The dials are black, apart from the white XS and the multicoloured Chrono.