Nomos Glashütte Club Sport neomatik 42 date black

The Nomos Glashütte Club Sport neomatik 42 date black upholds the brand’s reputation for delivering elegant aesthetics, mechanical virtue and incredible value. However, this model also offers an impressive degree of water resistance (300m) and comes supplied on an all new, high-quality bracelet. Mark McArthur-Christie, a self-confessed Nomos fan, explores this fascinating model in close detail.

For a town so outwardly quiet and traditional, perhaps even sleepy, a lot seems to happen in Glashütte. World War One saw the rapid decline of the market for the beautifully-made pocketwatches the town’s watchmakers specialised in. Undaunted, they turned their skills to making those new-fangled wristwatches. Soon, they’d built a formidable reputation for quality and, despite the Second World War and the close proximity to Dresden, all seemed well. At least, it did until May 1945 when the town was hit by a Soviet bombing raid. Then, just as Glashütte’s watchmakers had cleared away the last of the rubble, the Soviets themselves arrived and demonstrated their love of high-end watchmaking by confiscating, dismantling or nationalising any machinery they could find. Left behind the Iron Curtain, the town’s watchmakers kept at their benches, working together and finding their own engineering and tooling answers to the problem of poor supply and a limited market.

This was the background against which Roland Schwertner founded Nomos Glashütte, just a few months after the Wall came down.

One gets the sense that the team at Herr Schwertner’s Nomos prefers to do things their way. Rather than making the classically elegant style of watch for which Glashütte is famous, the firm produces watches that are deceptively plain and simple; basic, even. It’s only with a closer look that one realises the thought, complexity and design that’s gone into them.

Rather than buy movements in from outside, Nomos makes its own and has done since 2005. So if the firm planned to make a seriously robust piece of waterproof kit, you could pretty much guarantee it wouldn’t feature a ratchet bezel, a cyclops and a lollipop second hand. Nor would it resemble the standard diving watch stainless steel hockey puck. And you’d be right. The Nomos Glashütte Club Sport neomatik 42 date black looks deceptively dapper for a watch that’ll keep ticking way beyond the depths you’re ever likely to venture unless you hang around Marseilles a lot and it says COMEX on your other watch.

The Club Sport is good all the way down to 1,000ft or 30ATM. And it does this without looking like it’s just been unbolted from the conning tower of HMS Astute. The watch is barely a sniff over 10mm thin and elegant with it. To put this in context, 98ft (30m) is about as deep as most recreational divers will ever venture, so you’ll probably be ok wearing one to wash your submarine at the weekend.

It’s probably best to think of the Nomos Glashütte Club Sport neomatik 42 date black as a watch that will tell the time no matter where you wear it rather than as a diving watch. This, typically for Nomos, makes sense for normal people who use their watches in the real world. Let’s face it, most diving watches seldom see anything deeper than the swim-up bar on holiday. If you’re diving, you’ll probably use a dive computer rather than a mechanical wristwatch – making all the usual ‘dive watch’ bells and whistles pretty much redundant. So, with the Club you get a watch that’s both elegant enough to wear anywhere and sufficiently robust not to require kid gloves. One watch to rule them all?

So far, so Nomos. The Club Sport has the same design language as its fellows in the Club stable – alternating Arabic numerals and batons, the rounded case edges, pencil hands, and the running seconds on a subdial at six. But where you strap other Clubs on with NATO or shell cordovan straps, the Club Sport has Nomos’ first bracelet – worth a mention in its own right.

Typically, again, the bracelet’s apparent simplicity belies the thought and work that’s gone into making it. Each bracelet comprises of 145 separate pieces, all tessellated and hand-screwed together. They’re horizontally brushed and the whole thing snaps closed with a Nomos-branded deployant clasp. If you find yourself getting bored and fancying a strap change, it’s easy enough to do as the bracelet simply unclips from the lugs with two integral quick-release pins.

Quick-release straps are, usually, the work of Satan himself; the release pins catch on clothing or work loose and, before you know it, your watch is on the floor. The Nomos quick-release pins are fixed with screws, so there’s no chance of snagging one and losing your watch by mistake. This bracelet also appears on the Tangente Sport neomatik 42 date, a watch reviewed on ESCAPEMENT last year.

Where some watchmakers have gone for shouty, ‘look at me’ case sizes, Nomos has always preferred smaller watches. The Club Sport is towards the top end of their range size-wise, but even so it measures just 42mm, with slightly shorter lugs than the standard Club. It’s a testament to the design that the watch looks just right on pretty much any wrist. It neither overwhelms or gets lost.