Teddy Baldassarre
Oris ProPilot Date Review: The Big Crown ProPilot Evolved
The Oris Big Crown ProPilot Date has a prestigious history starting with the founding of the independent Swiss brand that makes it. Oris began making watches in 1904, when it was founded in Hölstein, Switzerland, by Paul Cattin and Georges Christian, who named the company after a nearby brook. A maker of pocket watches and, by 1925, the increasingly popular wristwatches, Oris enjoyed a long period of growth and expansion throughout the following decades and even made its own movements. Losing its independence during the consolidation years of the Quartz Crisis, Oris regained it in the 1980s, when a management buyout transformed the company and solidified its mission to make only mechanical watches going forward. Today, Oris has become a staple for value-conscious collectors of Swiss-made watches, particularly sport-oriented models. Among the brand’s modern pillars are the dressy Big Crown Pointer Date and the more aviation-centric Big Crown ProPilot, which trace their existence all the way back to 1938. That year marked the launch of the first Oris watch dubbed “Big Crown,” named after its signature element, an oversized, fluted winding crown meant to be easy to grasp and to operate by a pilot wearing heavy gloves. The modern edition of the Big Crown ProPilot debuted in 2014 (example above), notably adding what is today one of its signature features: a knurled bezel that resembles a jet turbine. Oris has revamped, tweaked, and added complications to the original, ...
