Laco Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven Review: The Grail in the Corner of the Catalogue
The Grail Hunt that keeps ending at Laco
It doesn’t happen often. I’ll be flipping through a brand’s back catalogue, mildly curious, and something stops me cold. A quiet reference, buried three levels deep on a product page, that suddenly reads like it was made for my wrist. Regular readers know how I feel about Laco, and Horologius has covered them more than once, from the Frankfurt 40 GMT to the Flieger Pro Stuttgart. This time, the culprits are called the Cuxhaven and the Bremerhaven.
Laco has been in Pforzheim since 1925 and most of the world knows them for one thing: Flieger. The B-Uhr blueprint, the toolwatch archetype, the piece every pilot-watch primer opens with. Fair enough, they’re extremely good at it. But the Navy line, tucked away behind the flieger wall, is where Laco keeps showing me it has a second gear. Small seconds, railway minute tracks, mid-century deck-watch cues translated into something you can actually put on today. Grails don’t announce themselves. You find them in the corners.
The Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven are that corner. Four references, two case sizes (39mm and 42.5mm), two dial temperaments, and two Swiss hand-wound movements that could not be more suited to what they’re driving. This is a pair of watches with almost nothing to prove and, oddly, almost everything to say.
A Case for Both Wrists
The first smart choice here is the sizing. Laco offers each dial in a 39mm and a 42.5mm case, which cover most of the modern wrist conversation without spilling into either extreme. The 39mm sits 10.0 millimetres thick with a 46mm lug-to-lug, comfortable ground for anyone from a slim six-inch wrist upward. The 42.5mm goes to 10.7 millimetres and 49.8mm lug-to-lug, still slim for its footprint, still very much on the polite side of a deck-watch homage.
Both cases are polished and brushed stainless steel with a fluted bezel that quietly sells the whole vintage brief. It's an old trick, but done right it does more work than a lot of applied indices or fancy dial texture ever will. Water resistance runs to 10 ATM across the range, which for a hand-wound observation-watch tribute is genuinely generous. The caseback is a wide sapphire window, screwed down, framing the movement with a proper full-plate view (dangerous if you are the kind of collector who ends up flipping the watch over more than looking at it).
The crown deserves a specific mention. Laco has given both watches a period-appropriate onion crown, generous, easy to wind, and cut in a shape that sits closer to a 1940s pocket watch than a modern pilot. It's the sort of detail you don't notice in press shots and can't ignore in the metal, and it works as a small piece of brand shorthand pointing back to Laco's own pocket-watch lineage.
Two Dials, One Idea
The naming is small poetry. Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven, two North Sea harbours a couple of hours apart on the German coast, and the dials mirror that geography. Cuxhaven wears a glossy white enamel-optic dial with thermally blued hands. Bremerhaven wears a matte black dial with skeletonised, blackened hand frames filled with lume. Same architecture, opposite temperament.
The Cuxhaven's blued hands are the star turn. Real thermal bluing sits somewhere between navy and slate depending on the light, and against the white dial it lands in that rare zone where legibility and beauty pull in the same direction (you don't get to say that about many dress-adjacent watches). Filled with Superluminova C3, the hands still read cleanly in low light without shouting about it.
Bremerhaven flips the whole thing. Skeletonised black hand frames, lume-filled, floating over a deep black dial, the numerals almost glowing when the room drops. It is the tool-watch cousin of the Cuxhaven's dress-watch reading, and it works because the underlying dial layout is so honest. Both dials use a proper railway minute track and Arabic numerals lifted from the mid-century observation-watch tradition, with a small seconds subdial at 6 o'clock that anchors the vertical axis and gives the eye somewhere to rest between the hour and minute reading. New vintage, in the most literal sense of the phrase.
Two Movements, Two Personalities
The movement pairing is the choice that makes the collection sing. The 39mm case takes the Laco 261, a Sellita SW261 in Elaboré grade, hand-wound, with a second-stop function. The 42.5mm case takes the Laco 98, an ETA Unitas 6498-2, hand-wound, 17 jewels. Two calibres that could not be more different in character despite serving the same brief.
The 6498-2 is a piece of horological history. Originally an Unitas pocket-watch calibre from the 1950s, later resurrected by ETA as the go-to base for oversized hand-wound wristwatches. Big balance wheel, slow beat, that beautiful hesitation you feel in the crown when you're winding it (horological ASMR, if you like). Laco finishes both bridges with Côtes de Genève and blues the screws, then shows the whole thing off through a wide sapphire opening in the caseback. It is a full-plate movement doing exactly what it's supposed to do, unhurried and enormously satisfying to wind at the start of the day.
The SW261 is the modern counterpart. Elaboré grade means better-selected components and tighter regulation than the base spec, and Laco applies the same visual treatment as the 98, Côtes de Genève on the bridges and thermally blued screws, so both watches read as members of the same family under glass. It's a rare thing to see a brand offer you a hand-wound choice that isn't really about spec but about temperament. Pick the smaller watch for the everyday, the bigger one for the ritual.
Straps, Feel, and the Overall Wear
Cuxhaven ships on a beige calfskin strap that is going to patinate beautifully within a year, and Bremerhaven ships on smooth black leather. The 39mm takes a 20mm lug width and the 42.5mm takes 22mm, which means both are trivially easy to re-strap into whatever aesthetic you're feeling that season, from horween shell cordovan to a heavy sailcloth. Stainless steel pin buckle in both cases, unadorned, correct.
On the wrist, the difference between the two sizes is bigger than the numbers suggest. The 39mm disappears into a shirt cuff and reads as a genuine daily wearer, sharp enough for a jacket and honest enough for a t-shirt. The 42.5mm is a wrist-check watch, the kind of piece you set down on the desk deliberately and glance at because the winding ritual has already started your morning. Neither pretends to be the other, and that is exactly the point.
Why It’s Special
This is a collection with almost no marketing muscle behind it, which is part of what makes it easy to overlook and rewarding to actually find. A few things earn it a place in the conversation.
- Sizing done properly: 39mm and 42.5mm across the same design language is a rare piece of restraint. Most brands pick one number and defend it. Laco offers you both and lets your wrist decide.
- Thermally blued hands, done right: real bluing rather than a coating, filled with Superluminova C3, and paired with a white enamel-optic dial. Very few watches near this price point get this combination genuinely right.
- Movement pairing that reads as a design choice, not a spreadsheet: the SW261 for the everyday, the 6498-2 for the ritual. Both hand-wound, both finished consistently, both shown off through a proper sapphire back.
- Onion crown as brand shorthand: an homage to Laco's own pocket-watch lineage rather than a generic vintage cue. Wound daily, it becomes the tactile memory of the watch.
- A price that is oddly honest: $1,560 / €1,290 for the 39mm and $2,150 / €1,790 for the 42.5mm puts these into a bracket where most competitors are quartz reissues or Miyota-powered fashion homages. Neither is what you're getting here.
Old Bones, New Wrist
The Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven feel like watches that arrive at your wrist already broken in. There is no learning curve, no phase where you're deciding what they're for. They tell time cleanly, wear the way well-cut clothing does, and reward the kind of small daily attention hand-wound movements always demand.
At $1,560 / €1,290 for the 39mm and $2,150 / €1,790 for the 42.5mm, the price sits about where it should for what you're getting: Swiss hand-wound calibres in the Elaboré and 6498-2 traditions, sapphire on both sides, real thermal bluing on the white-dial variants, and a design that has clearly been left alone long enough to feel considered rather than iterated on. The 42.5mm carries the premium because the 6498-2 is a much larger movement to source and finish, and because the case has more real estate to work with.
If you're the kind of collector who buys once and wears often, either size will do. If you're the kind who wants both a shirt-cuff watch and a Sunday-morning ritual watch, the answer is probably the same as it was when you started reading this. Now go check your wrist size and pick your dial colour.
Specifications
- Brand: Laco
- Model: Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven, 39mm and 42.5mm variants
- Case Material: Stainless steel, polished and brushed finish, fluted bezel
- Case Dimensions (39mm): 39.0mm diameter, 10.0mm thick, 46.0mm lug-to-lug, 20mm lug width
- Case Dimensions (42.5mm): 42.5mm diameter, 10.7mm thick, 49.8mm lug-to-lug, 22mm lug width
- Water Resistance: 10 ATM
- Crystal: Anti-reflective sapphire on the front, sapphire exhibition caseback
- Dial (Cuxhaven): White enamel-optic with railway minute track, small seconds at 6 o'clock, thermally blued hands filled with Superluminova C3
- Dial (Bremerhaven): Matte black with railway minute track, small seconds at 6 o'clock, skeletonised black hand frames filled with Superluminova C3
- Movement (39mm): Laco 261, based on Sellita SW261 in Elaboré grade, hand-wound, Côtes de Genève on the bridges, thermally blued screws, second-stop function
- Movement (42.5mm): Laco 98, based on ETA Unitas 6498-2, hand-wound, 17 jewels, Côtes de Genève on the bridges, blued screws
- Strap: Beige calfskin (Cuxhaven) or smooth black leather (Bremerhaven), stainless steel pin buckle
- Crown: Onion crown, hand-winding
- Lume: Superluminova C3 on numerals, indices, and hands
- Limited Edition: No, series production
- Price: $1,560 / €1,290 (39mm) / $2,150 / €1,790 (42.5mm)
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About Laco Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven: Key Questions Answered
What is the difference between the Laco Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven?
They share the same case, dial architecture, and movement platform, but the Cuxhaven wears a white enamel-optic dial with thermally blued hands and the Bremerhaven wears a matte black dial with skeletonised black hand frames filled with Superluminova C3. Both come in a 39mm or 42.5mm case, so the real choice is between dress-watch legibility (Cuxhaven) and tool-watch punch (Bremerhaven).
What movement powers the Laco Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven?
The 39mm variants use the Laco 261, a Swiss hand-wound Sellita SW261 in Elaboré grade with a second-stop function. The 42.5mm variants use the Laco 98, a Swiss hand-wound ETA Unitas 6498-2 with 17 jewels. Both are decorated with Côtes de Genève on the bridges and blued screws, all visible through the sapphire caseback.
Are the Laco Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven suitable for everyday wear?
Yes. Both sizes are rated to 10 ATM, which comfortably handles hand-washing, rain, and the occasional swim, and both cases stay under 11mm thick so they slide easily under a shirt cuff. The 39mm is the more discreet daily choice, while the 42.5mm rewards a slightly more deliberate wearing style.
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