The past five years have been something of a coming-of-age for Oris. Irrespective of being in what perhaps are the industry’s darkest days, the brand doesn’t put a foot wrong. It made a triumphant return to its roots with the introduction of its in-house cal. 110, a hand-wound powerhouse with a 10-day power reserve, which further spawned the cal. 111, featuring the inclusion of a date complication, the 112 which played host to a second timezone and a day-night indication, and the incoming 113.

It created the airborne counterpoint to its famous Aquis Depth Gauge: the Big Crown ProPilots, and most of all, it rebooted the Divers Sixty-Five, a retro diver that embodied everything we love about beater-tool watches. Executed in a series of staggeringly handsome iterations from a Deauville blue dial to a bronze Carl Brashear Limited Edition to a gorgeous bottle-green with seemingly no end in sight, it concretized the brand’s rich diving heritage and intelligently addressed the zeitgeist of making the past look like something the future would crave.

This year marks the beginning of what we’d wager to be another incredible run for Oris as they have chosen to pursue yet another segment of their archives with the return of the ChronOris. The watch in question marked the company’s first foray into motorsports in 1970. Dubbed the Star ChronOris, it was a stop-seconds chronograph; bold-faced with an orange seconds track that ran three quarters of the way around the dial, featuring an orange central seconds hand. In keeping with the times, it had a case that resembled a cross between a tonneau and its corpulent cousin, the cushion, and was equipped with the brand’s first in-house chronograph movement, the hand-wound cal. 725.

Later in 2005, Oris introduced a modern interpretation that kept most of the styling of the original intact with a minute counter positioned at 12 o’clock and a tachymeter scale on the inner dial ring. Powering it was a modern double pusher chronograph movement that was based on the ETA Valijoux 7750. Oris even went on to further develop a special numbered Grand Prix Limited Edition piece featuring a slightly larger case along with green accents instead of orange.

The new incarnation today is the ChronOris Date, a three-hander with a rewardingly retro vibe. It features the same distinctive, streamlined stainless steel case appropriately downsized to 39mm—a universally more attractive fit for both men and women—with a multi-tone dial punctuated with orange hour markers and central seconds hand. A distinguished feature of the watch is the inner rotating bezel’s timer function which is actuated via a separate screw-down crown at 4 o’clock, allowing the wearer to time the seconds, minutes or hours, depending on which hand the orange triangle is aligned to zero with.

Another detail most people would appreciate is the array of strap options: a brown or black leather strap, a black rubber strap, a grey NATO textile strap and even a really neat stainless steel bracelet option. As for the latter, Oris’s engineers worked to bring the design of the original articulated bracelet up to date and manufacture it in keeping with the same exacting standards of every watch in its collection. Featuring 15 links across, the new design is thinner than the original, a slender, supple bracelet that conforms elegantly to the wearer’s wrist.

Inside beats the automatic cal. 733 that is based on the trusty Sellita SW 200-1, which permits prices to be kept mouth-wateringly low at just CHF 1,600 on a strap and CHF 1,800 on a metal bracelet.