CBG2A1Z.FT6157
Selfridges / Oxford Street, London, 5th January 2019
Leaving aside the slightly shoddy service I received in Selfridges, which I already mentioned in my 'London' post a couple of weeks ago, I'm still quite surprised just how long it has taken for this to reach the UK. The watch was one of the talking points of Baselworld 2018 (which took place last March) and yet it's taken until January for it to arrive here. Even more astonishing since it has apparently been on sale in Sweden since last September, and I thought the UK was a prime market for TAG Heuer?
Selfridges actually had both the rubber strap and bracelet versions of the watch on display, but as ever with the 'modular' Carreras, I find the lugs don't work so well with the bracelets as while the rubber strap joins seamlessly to create a fluid transformation to the case the bracelets form a rather cumbersome looking step.
CBG2A1Z.BA0658
But you pays your money and you takes your choice, and actually it's fairly unusual for me to choose a rubber strap over a bracelet these days. Two years ago I was mad for anything with a rubber strap, but I've definitely changed my views on that with most watches. Not with this one though and so I chose the FT6157 to have a look at.
At 45mm this is a sizeable watch and it looks it too. I'm used to my own 45mm Carrera but I think this appears slightly bigger, which is probably because the case is steel rather than black PVD coated titanium. Actually I'm pretty sure the man in Selfridges told me this was titanium, but it isn't. He also told me it was 43mm, and again... it isn't.
This one looks a little different close-up than it does in the photographs, I can't quite put my finger on what exactly looks different, I guess maybe the blue of the bezel looks darker than I expected... and one minor detail that is different from just about every single photo that I've seen is that TAG have replaced the text 'GMT' with the words 'Twin Time'. I really don't know what the reasoning behind this is, because the watch is listed on their website as the TAG Heuer Carrera Heuer 02 GMT. Also, everyone refers to it as the 'GMT' and personally I think the GMT text looked a bit neater as well, but in the end it's a tiny detail which doesn't sway my opinion of the watch as a whole.
This is a watch that I thought was a probably contender for my next 'big' purchase, but I have to say on the wrist it didn't make me want to max out my credit card there and then. I don't know whether it's because I've just sent my Grand Carrera GMT to Watchfinder and so I'm slightly down on GMTs...? As a complication it's true that I have zero use for one as I travel abroad about as often as Mars goes round the sun... two or three times, and even when I did go abroad I took my Heuer 01 instead!
But I don't necessarily think it's that. Maybe I just don't like the black/blue bezel combination as much as I thought I did? I always thought the Rolex 'Batman' looked quite nice, but I was less impressed with the David Guetta Formula 1 bezel. At the time I put that down to the materials used in an entry level watch but now I'm not so sure and I also think that blue sub-dial ring just reminds me that I'd rather have the carbon Carrera instead...
The TAG Heuer Carrera Heuer 02 GMT is £4900 on a bracelet and £4800 on the rubber, and if it isn't already in your local AD I would imagine it will be soon, just don't ask for the 'Twin Time' Carrera because they probably won't know what you're talking about!
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