MY 6 WEEKS WITH: The Sorna World Timer

Sean Ding

If you want to know how hard you need to slap a chicken to cook it, the internet is almost too ready to give you an answer. On the other hand, if you google any combination and permutation of the words ‘Sorna’, ‘World Timer’ and ‘watches’, you’ll find four to five relevant searches that are older than most high schoolers. Even Wikipedia, the all-knowing and all-seeing, doesn’t seem to acknowledge the existence of this watch and brand. If that isn’t the bleakest affirmation of obscurity, then I don’t know what is. What follows is a distillation of all the research I have compiled and experience I have gained in the month and a half of owning the Sorna World Timer.

The original Sorna Watch Company (apparently no association to the Kickstarter brand sharing its name) suffered a fate similar to many other Swiss brands during the quartz crisis. The company went into liquidation, but the name was purchased by an unknown company that continued to produce watches faithfully replicating the original ’70s chronograph designs, but using an ebauche movement that removed the chronograph function and replaced it with a day-month one. Sorna did apparently have some connection to racing, collaborating with Belgian driver Jacky Ickx to produce another version of the ‘Easy Rider Bullhead Chronograph’ originally produced by Heuer. Here ends the history lesson.

Given the lack of documented history, there are no factory-supplied specs on this particular watch. But by actually owning this piece and comparing it to the very well documented Seiko Turtle, I can tell you that the Sorna is a hair taller due to a minutely domed crystal, and much shorter lug-to-lug, owing to the absence of protruding lugs. However, what it lacks in length, it compensates for in width thanks to the prominence of its five crowns.

Without having taken the watch apart, I know the movement is a hackable automatic 21-jewel movement with manual winding, (as opposed to the original 17-jewel manual movement), 50 metres water resistance, and date, day and month complications at the 4, 10 and 6 o’clock positions respectively. The three crowns on the right-hand side control the day, date and month in addition to setting the hands. The two on the left control the inner timing bezel and world-time disk. The outer slide rule has a smooth rotating action, but has an unexpectedly jagged, almost serrated edge to it.

For me, it’s the sheer ridiculousness of the design that seizes you by the neck and throttles you into liking it. Subtlety clearly wasn’t on the inspo-board for this one. The outlandish case shape is so atypical of what you see from most modern watchmaking that you can’t help but take a second, third and fourth look. The garish gold and yellow accented by splashes of white, red and blue unabashedly embraces its ’70s retro DNA, and stands in bold opposition to many of the vintage reissues you see from mainstream names. There’s an infectious quality to the energy of this dial that makes it impossible for you to be in a bad mood when you wear it, and for something you can get for around 200 bucks on eBay, I think you stand to gain a lot more than you lose if you pick one up.