News · Nivada Grenchen

Nivada Grenchen gives the Autochron the orange dial its 1970s shape was asking for

A matte black dial running out into orange, with beige counters and a 120-click bezel, in both the Valjoux 7750 and meca-quartz versions of the revived chronograph.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 16 August 2026

• Nivada Grenchen has added an orange dial to the revived Autochron, in both the Valjoux 7750 automatic and the Seiko VK67 meca-quartz versions.
• The matte black dial runs out into an orange gradient with beige chronograph counters, under a 37 mm aluminium bezel with 120 positive clicks.
• The automatic is US$2,295 on strap or rubber and US$2,495 on bracelet, with the meca-quartz at US$530 and US$730, neither of them limited.

The colour the Autochron was always going to end up wearing

Nivada Grenchen brought the Autochron back at the start of this month, and the launch line-up was sensible in a way that felt slightly like a brand clearing its throat: a panda, a reverse panda, a blue. All good, none of them the colour a watch shaped like this is really asking for. A shape drawn in the late 1970s wants a late 1970s colour, and Nivada has now supplied one. The Autochron Orange arrives in both the mechanical and the meca-quartz versions, and it turns the watch into something noticeably less polite.

The dial is the reason to look. It is matte black through the centre and runs out into a vivid orange gradient towards the edge, with a fine white minute track laid across the orange and a tachymetre scale running around the inner edge of the bezel, and two chronograph counters in a warm beige sit at nine and twelve. That beige against black and orange is a very specific combination, the colour a cricket ball goes after a season rather than anything fresh, and it stops the dial reading as a fluorescent novelty. The applied indexes carry Nivada's Super 1345C lume and are the same shade again.

Around the outside is the 37 mm aluminium bezel with 120 positive click positions, turning one way only, which is new to this generation of the Autochron and gives the watch a job beyond timing a lap. It is also the detail that makes the Autochron a slightly awkward thing to categorise, since you have a diving-style click bezel over a tachymetre chapter ring on a chronograph rated to 200 m. That is not confusion, it is exactly what the late 1970s were like.

Thirty-eight millimetres, and a thickness worth reading twice

The case is 316L stainless steel with a vertically brushed finish and polished details, 38 mm across and 44.3 mm from lug to lug, with a band width tapering from 20 mm to 16 mm. On those two numbers alone this is one of the easier chronographs to wear that anybody is selling right now, because 44.3 mm of lug span is short for a watch with pushers.

Then the thickness, and Nivada is admirably straight about it: 12.7 mm without the glass, 15.20 mm with it. Fifteen and a bit is a lot, and the double-domed sapphire is where a good chunk of that goes. On the wrist a domed crystal reads shorter than a flat one of the same height, but nobody should go in expecting this to slip under a shirt cuff. It is a 7750 chronograph with 20 ATM of water resistance, and physics has a vote.

Inside the automatic version is the ETA Valjoux 7750, running at 28,800 vibrations per hour with 48 hours of reserve, driving hours, minutes, small seconds, a 60 second chronograph with 30 minute and 12 hour counters, and a date window at three. The 7750 is the movement everyone in this category reaches for, and the honest reason is that it works, it can be serviced by any competent watchmaker in the country, and it costs less than the alternatives. Forty-eight hours means it is a watch that keeps time if you skip a day and stops if you skip two.

The cheap one is the interesting decision

Nivada has also put the orange dial on the meca-quartz Autochron, reference 77004Q10, using a Seiko VK67 with a date. Same 38 mm steel case, same double-domed sapphire, same 200 m rating, 12.65 mm thick without the crystal, and a silver oxide cell good for roughly three years. A meca-quartz gives you a chronograph seconds hand that sweeps and a pusher that clicks like a mechanical one, and it does it for less than a quarter of the price.

I have gone around in circles on which of these two I would actually buy, and I have landed somewhere unfashionable. The 7750 version is the better watch and I would recommend it without hesitation to anybody who wants one watch. But at US$530, the meca-quartz in this colourway is the one I would put on a rubber strap and stop worrying about, and a dial this loud probably wants to be treated that way. If the appeal of the orange is that the watch is a bit reckless, then buying the careful version of it feels like missing the joke.

What Nivada keeps getting right is not the reissuing, it is the restraint about what to change. The Autochron came out of one of the brand's rarest late-1970s experiments, and rather than smoothing it into a generic vintage chronograph, this generation has kept the odd proportions and added a bezel that gives it something to do. The orange is the point at which that stops being a historical exercise and starts being a watch people will want.

Nivada Grenchen Autochron Orange pricing and availability

The Autochron Automatic Orange is available to pre-order directly from Nivada Grenchen at US$2,295 on the black racing strap (reference 77004A10) or the orange Tropic rubber (77004A27), and US$2,495 on the stainless steel bracelet (77004A45), with shipping stated to begin in early September. The meca-quartz Autochron Orange, reference 77004Q10, is US$530 on the racing strap or orange rubber and US$730 on the bracelet. Neither is a limited edition, and Nivada prices in US dollars with no separate Australian figure on its own store. A two year warranty applies.