At Replica Watches & Wonders 2015 Panerai officially launched new versions of the popular 42mm Radiomir 1940s that came out two years ago, containing the new manual-wind Calibre P.1000, replacing the P.999. The new movement has a seconds at 9 o’clock, a power reserve of three days (up from sixty hours, thanks to twin barrels versus single), beats at 28,800VPH versus 21,000VPH for its predecessor, and the most notable change, a seconds reset feature. For those who are unfamiliar with this, it stops the balance and ‘resets’ the seconds hand to zero when time-setting, to allow for perfect synchronisation with the reference time.
The PAM574 is the stainless steel model, and PAM575 the red gold. The former is water resistant to 100m and the latter, 50m.
The mainplate is brushed, and you will note some nice bevelling and polishing.
So. The green alligator strap.
Perhaps the most pronounced feature of the PAM00574 is this boldly coloured strap. However, if we hark back a little bit, it is not a new thing as such. This was part of a range of eight brightly coloured straps that were released last year (see this link) for the Radiomir 1940 (42mm), Luminor 1950 (42mm) and Luminor (40mm). The rose gold version comes on a more sober black strap. Panerai have simply chosen to put it on this new model as the default strap. It is certainly more likely to grab attention because of this.
There’s only one other dial design amendment to the earlier models. The Super-LumiNova has gone from the faux-vintage colour to green.
As well as these two new manual models, Panerai have released an automatic version of the Radiomir 1940 42mm. Available only in stainless steel, the PAM620 contains the Calibre P.4000. Superficially the dial only has the addition of ‘Automatic’. Power reserve is the same as for the PAM574 and PAM575 and there is again a micro-rotor, visible through an open caseback.
Each of these new Radiomirs will have limitations : 500 pieces for the PAM620, 1000 for the PAM574, and 200 for the PAM575. Prices in EUR are :
PAM00574 manual, steel: €7,400
PAM00575 manual, rose gold: €17,600
PAM00620 automatic, steel: €9,700
[Horologium attended Replica Watches & Wonders 2015 by invitation of Richemont Australia]