Television presenter James May spotted wearing a Hamilton

James May was recently photographed wearing a Hamilton Khaki GMT Air Race in stainless steel, reference H77695333 — a watch that sits firmly in the intersection of aviation heritage and no-nonsense utility. May, rarely seen chasing horological fashion, makes a characteristically deliberate choice here.

The Hamilton Khaki GMT Air Race H77695333 is built around the ETA-based Hamilton caliber H-40 automatic movement, offering hours, minutes, seconds, date, and a true GMT complication tracking a second time zone via a 24-hour hand. The case measures 44mm in stainless steel with a black dial and the model's signature circular slide-rule bezel — lifted directly from the aesthetic vocabulary of analogue flight computers. Water resistance sits at 100 metres. The bracelet on this reference is an integrated rubber strap with a deployment clasp, reinforcing the cockpit-ready positioning.

Hamilton's Air Race line references the brand's long relationship with aviation — Hamilton supplied watches to American military pilots during World War II and has maintained aviation-adjacent sport lines ever since. The Air Race name nods to competitive airshow culture, and the slide-rule bezel, while rarely used for actual navigation today, is a genuine functional instrument rather than decorative geometry. Among GMT watches in the sub-$1,000 segment, the Khaki Air Race occupies a credible niche: Swiss-made, in-house-branded movement, aviation provenance, and a dial layout with real character.

May's affinity for the Hamilton makes cultural sense. The former Top Gear and The Grand Tour presenter has consistently gravitated toward objects with engineering rationale over pure status signalling — he has spoken publicly about preferring things that work well over things that merely look expensive. A Hamilton GMT with a slide-rule bezel is precisely that kind of object: purposeful, historically grounded, and indifferent to the luxury watch conversation.

On the secondary market, the Hamilton Khaki GMT Air Race H77695333 trades close to or slightly below retail, reflecting steady demand but not the kind of scarcity premium that distorts the grey market for more fashionable references. It remains one of the more honest value propositions in Swiss automatic GMT watches at this price point.