Autodromo has spent over a decade translating motorsport design into watches, and the brand has now arrived somewhere it’s never been before. I always loved tracking the brand as an earlier “micro” outfit back when I caught the watch bug in my adult life. The new Group C Turbo Sport is Autodromo’s first ana-digi watch, building directly on the digital Group C that landed back in 2023. This time, the inspiration comes from the analog tachometers found in turbocharged race and road cars of the 1980s, the era when Group C prototypes dominated endurance racing with boost levels that bordered on reckless. It’s a specific reference point, and that specificity has always been Autodromo’s strength.
The original Group C earned its following by committing fully to the digital format with a case shape that felt pulled straight from a prototype cockpit. The Autodromo Group C Turbo Sport keeps that compact footprint. The case measures 38.5mm in diameter with a listed 40mm lug-to-lug and an 11.4mm thickness, rendered in anodized aluminum with a stainless steel caseback. Weight comes in at a feathery 58 grams, water resistance sits at 50 meters, and the watch ships on a 20mm FKM rubber strap with a nylon inlay. None of this reads as a tool watch. Instead, it’s clearly built to disappear on the wrist during a weekend drive.
The dial is where the tachometer concept does its work. A subtle grid pattern sits behind high-contrast hands and indexes, while a small digital display occupies the lower portion of the dial, much like the early LCD odometers that crept into analog instrument clusters. Functionality covers three time zones, a daily alarm, a 1/100th second chronograph, and 12 or 24-hour formatting. Three colorways are on offer for the Autodromo Group C Turbo Sport: a silver case with gray dial and neon green hands, a black-on-black version with pink-red accents, and a gold case with black dial and yellow details. Each carries four pushers, with one accent pusher in blue or red depending on the model.
At first glance, the $450 price puts this in interesting territory. That’s well above the Casio ana-digi models most of us grew up with, however it’s also far below where boutique digital watches from the fashion-adjacent crowd tend to land. Autodromo is essentially betting that design intent and material execution justify the buy-in, the same bet that worked for the original Group C. Worth noting, the brand hasn’t specified which module powers the watch, so accuracy and battery life remain open questions for now.
What I keep coming back to is whether the ana-digi format becomes a permanent fixture for Autodromo or stays a one-off experiment tied to this particular reference. The brand has a habit of expanding successful platforms in unexpected directions, and the Group C line now spans two very different formats.
Co-Founder & Senior Editor
Michael Peñate is an American writer, photographer, and podcaster based in Seattle, Washington. His work typically focuses on the passage of time and the tools we use to connect with that very journey. From aviation to music and travel, his interests span a multitude of disciplines that often intersect with the world of watches – and the obsessive culture behind collecting them.