Friday, 6 May 2022

ON THE WRIST: Heuer Carrera 'Montreal' 160th Anniversary Heuer 02 Chronograph

 
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TAG Heuer Boutique / Nottingham, 23rd April 2022

I can't honestly remember the last time I visited Nottingham city centre (other than occasional visits to Rock City), so it was interesting to see what had changed and of course I was eager to visit the plush looking TAG Heuer boutique on Clumber Street. I was hopeful that they would have the new orange Aquaracer and possibly something else released at Watches & Wonders 2022, but sadly the only things they had were two of the new yellow 'Porsche' Carreras and these were being held out the back as they were reserved for customers.

Still it was nice to visit a new TAG Heuer boutique, although it seemed a bit oddly placed (opposite Greggs and a closed down Holland & Barrett) when most of the jewellers were positioned inside the Victoria Centre (I would have thought that would have made more sense from a security point of view as well really... but then again maybe it's better to have one TAG Heuer stockist inside the centre and one in the city streets). Inside of course it's a very nice environment, though the only watches they had in the window were Connected smart watches which I thought was a bit strange.


The stock was decent, but nothing I hadn't seen before. However I did strike up a good conversation with salesman Brad who was very friendly and welcoming and during this conversation my eye happened to fall upon the most interesting thing in the boutique, this 160th Anniversary 39mm Carrera 'Montreal' Heuer 02 Chronograph. This came out way back in mid 2020, but this was the first time I had ever come across one in a store (as far as I can remember). 

If you've been reading the blog a while you may remember that about eighteen months ago I purchased the silver dial Carrera 160th Anniversary and shipped it to Sweden for our good friend Jim Dollares. You may also remember my incredulity at how small the watch seemed when I (carefully) took it out of the box, and I have to say the Montreal is no different.


I don't really know why it strikes so small, especially since I have plenty of watches smaller in diameter, and I really find it hard to fathom that the Heuer fans on the THF forums still moan about it being too big or too thick... I mean, it's not a big, chunky watch by any standard, what do these people want?

The really surprising thing about this watch though is that it really isn't as primary colour bright as you think it's going to be. I guess when people put their watches on Instagram and the like they use filters to make it pop and this gives you a rather unrealistic impression of what the watch is actually like on the wrist. Yes the blue is prominent on the dial, bit it's calmer than expected and the yellow is nothing like the acid yellow I was expecting. That's probably a good thing to be honest, because I'd kind of formed the impression that this was a bit of a joke watch, when in reality it's colourful without crossing the line into clownshoes territory.


You guys know that this watch definitely isn't my cup of tea and I'll be the first to say that if I had £5600 burning a hole in my pocket then I could think of 100 watches I'd buy instead, but that doesn't mean I have any reason to be negative about it. But I am surprised that there are still pieces available when this watch was limited to just 1000 pieces... and honestly I'm even more surprised to see it here in Nottingham. With all due respect to Nottingham, it doesn't seem like the first boutique I'd visit if I was looking for one of these... I'd have thought Oxford Street would be a much more likely outlet for it, especially since Brad tells me that there are only two left in the UK now.

One thing that may be of interest, if you haven't already heard, is that TAG Heuer has extended the warranty on its Heuer 02 powered watches (such as this one) from two to five years, and this is also being applied retrospectively to certain previously purchased models. I believe if you have one you just need to visit the TAG Heuer website and activate your warranty extension, though to be honest I couldn't find anything on there about this myself... 

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