The Bulova Lunar Pilot is low key one of my favourite chronographs, pairing a cool tricompax display with a strong heritage, a high quality quartz movement and an accessible price point. By strong heritage, I’m referring the fact that David R. Scott, the Mission Commander of Apollo 15, wore a Bulova chronograph when he became the first person to drive the Lunar Rover on the surface of the moon. In celebration of this astronomical fact, Bulova have unveiled the new Meteorite Limited Edition Lunar Pilot.
You can probably intuit that the most significant part of the Meteorite Limited Edition is the meteorite dial. It’s made from a thin sliver of real meteorite taken from the famous Muonionalusta meteor that landed in Scandinavia approximately 1 million years BCE. It displays the iconic Widmanstätten pattern of striations caused by the high iron content of the meteor as it passes through the atmosphere. It looks incredible and means that no two dials are identical as the patterns are made organically.
As for the layout and display, it’s a classic chronograph with peripheral tachymeter, central hours, minutes and chronograph seconds as well as a trio of circular grained subdials for small seconds, 60-minute timer and 12-hour timer. The grey and black colourway does mean that it will certainly draw comparisons to the Omega Moonwatch, or even the MoonSwatch considering that it’s quartz.
However, just because it’s a quartz movement doesn’t mean it’s your regular off the shelf number like a Swiss Ronda. It’s Bulova’s proprietary NP20 High Precision Quartz (HPQ) chronograph movement accurate to 1/20th second. In fact, Bulova produced the first fully electric watch in the form of the Accutron (a watch so famous it’s now its own brand), meaning that if there’s any brand where you don’t get to be snobby about quartz vs automatic, it’s Bulova.
That movement is housed in the watch’s 43.5mm titanium case and presented on a black leather NATO style strap. The choice of a NATO is an interesting choice because it means that it passes between the caseback and your wrist (great for high intensity activity where you’re concerned about the watch slipping or breaking free). Which normally wouldn’t be a problem but the Meteorite Limited Edition Lunar Pilot has a cool engraved caseback depicting an astronaut on the Moon and the strap entirely obscures it.
The Bulova Meteorite Limited Edition Lunar Pilot is limited to 5,000 pieces worldwide and is priced at £1,195. Even by Bulova’s high quality standards, that it fairly pricy for a quartz watch – even the 50th Anniversary model from 2021 was only £795. However, the combination of the movement with the titanium case and meteorite dial does make it a lot more inviting. I think this is the coolest expression of the Lunar Pilot to date.
Price and Specs:
Model:
Bulova
Meteorite Limited Edition Lunar Pilot
Case:
43.5mm
diameter, grade-5 titanium and stainless steel
Dial:
Meteorite
Water resistance:
50m
(5 bar)
Movement:
Bulova
NP20 High Precision Quartz (HPQ)
Functions:
Hours,
minutes, seconds, chronograph
Strap:
Black
leather NATO
Price:
£1,195,
limited to 5,000 pieces
More details at Bulova.
Oracle Time