The Orologi Calamai GMT Automatico, an Accessible and Stylish Italian Travel Watch

Orologi Calamai isn’t a household name in the industry, but this small Italian brand has been producing intriguing, aeronautical-inspired watches since its founding in 2012. Unfortunately, MONOCHROME can’t cover the entire array of small, independent brands out there (we try, believe me), but Orologi Calamai definitely caught our eye, and we’ve covered them in the past with the CR42 Chronograph and G50 MKIII Solotempo. The latest GMT Automatico is a purposeful caller GMT with an understated style that’s more than meets the eye.

Orologi Calamai blends two themes in its watches – Italy and aviation – and every case for the GMT Automatico is crafted from turbine steel from Panavia Tornado fighter jets. That puts genuine aviation history on your wrist. These fighters were developed in a tri-national consortium with Italian, German and British engineering, and prototypes first flew in 1974. Company founder Francesco Calamai has decades of acrobatic flying experience, and his father flew in World War II with the Royal Italian Air Force. His son, Manfredi Calamai, is a new pilot as well. This passion for aviation and Italian heritage is seen in every watch in Orologi Calamai’s portfolio, and the brand even supplied watches to the Italian Air Force.

The brushed and polished case of the new Orologi Calamai GMT Automatico is 39mm in diameter and 10.8mm in height with crystal (47.5mm lug-to-lug) – all in all, great proportions – and the solid caseback features the serial number of the specific turbine used for its makeup (secured with four peripheral screws). It also displays a polished aerobatic aircraft in flight. 

The bidirectional black ceramic bezel, with a very legible white 24-hour scale, has 48 clicks and a cool diamond-pattern knurling that’s shared with the signed screw-down crown. There are minimal crown guards with a mild extension on the opposite side of the case for balance. A sapphire crystal protects the dial, and the depth rating is 50 metres. The smallish size is very comfortable with a thin profile, and a 20mm brushed and polished seven-link steel bracelet completes this refined, robust package.

The black dial has multiple levels with a granular textured centre surrounded by a thin ring and small marks. Then there’s a ridged outer ring with applied metal indices and Arabic numerals at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock, all filled with white Super-LumiNova. The syringe hour and minute hands also have white Super-LumiNova, while the seconds hand is green with a white lumed tip. The GMT hand is skeletonized and the most discreet of them all, but still perfectly legible for tracking a second time zone. A detailed minute/seconds track sits on an angled flange at the outermost perimeter.

Powering the GMT Automatico is a Sellita SW330-2 Top Grade automatic (a clone of the ETA 2893-2), adjusted to six positions after casing. It has 25 jewels, beats at 28,800vph (4Hz) and comes with a 56-hour power reserve. Functions include central hours, minutes, hacking seconds, GMT and date (not utilized here). Accuracy is rated at an average of +/- 4 seconds per day. This is again an office/caller GMT watch as the GMT hand can be set independently in one-hour increments, while a traveller’s GMT independently sets the local hour hand instead.

The Orologi Calamai GMT Automatico retails for EUR 2,400, which isn’t bad at all for a stylish and thin office GMT made from the turbine steel of a fighter jet. There’s definitely a cool factor there, in addition to the Italian roots. It’s well-sized, comfortable and allows for three time zones to be tracked with the rotating 24-hour bezel. For more information and to place an order, please visit www.orologicalamai.com.