FEATURE: The C.O.C.O. Council Watch of the Year 2024

Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a good Christmas and now you're keen and eager to find out which of TAG Heuer's 2024 releases manage to snag the coveted 'C.O.C.O. Watch of the Year' award?

You know, when it comes to the 'Watch of the Year' I generally don't have much skin in the game. As regular readers will know I'm never really one to follow popular opinion, so my top pick is almost always an also ran... and sure enough once again my favourite watch of 2024 (the stunning, diamond bezel Carrera Sports - CBN2A12) was never going to make the final podium, but it did do better than I expected garnering a respectable =5th place.

So with that one firmly out of the picture, what else do we expect to be in the top three? 

Perhaps before we go any further, we should remind ourselves of our previous winners... starting in 2020 with the 160th Anniversary Silver Carrera...

Wow, what an eclectic mixture of avant garde timepieces...

Well, as you can see, the 'Council' is nothing if not conservative and more than a little predictable, so it's easy to understand why the Hodinkee Searacer has been the odds on favourite ever since it was released back in August. I mean... three 39mm Heritage Heuer Carreras and one 42mm TAG Heuer trying to look like a vintage model, it's a no brainer right? Plus it was released in conjunction with everybody's favourite watch media company 'Hodinkee' which immediately grants it a special 'status' with a certain group of people. 

But as we headed into December I felt like we still had a fight on our hands. Yes the Seafarer would probably take the win once the dust had settled, but it certainly didn't feel like the situation we had last year where we knew damn well what was going to be WOTY even before the end of February! 

So who were the likely challengers?

Well, there was the new Glassbox Panda for a start, which perfectly fits the mould of what the previous 'WOTYs' have looked like. Then there was the limited edition Carrera Extreme Sports made in honour of the Porsche 963 racing car and on top of that we also had the 42mm Panamericana Porsche tourbillon; though I knew few would find it acceptable to vote for a £30,000 watch wearing a conventional steel case.

Then outside of the Carrera family of course we had the Monaco. It came close once before with the 'Titan' in 2021, so maybe the dark hued 'CBL2188' could step up to the plate, or maybe even the 'Las Vegas' Monaco with its pink highlights...?

 

Late in the year a rather unexpected challenger emerged... a moody, stylish Aquaracer that somehow managed to appeal to a wide cross section of the Council despite the handicap of being shod with a green NATO strap. This was the 'Time & Tide' Limited Edition and everyone seemed to rather like it... but would people actually use their vote on an Aquaracer over a Carrera or a Monaco?  

And then finally in November TAG Heuer muddied the waters even further when they fitted a new solid gold bracelet to last year's gold Panda Glassbox. Was this the watch that could take the crown... or would it simply divert crucial and potentially 'winning' votes away from the Seafarer with it's evocative retro vibes?

A very good question that.... but before we go any further I guess I should perhaps explain for anyone who hasn't been here before how the 'Council of Considered Opinion: Watch of the Year' works. 

Over the years I have assembled a 'council' of thirty members who score each new watch as it is released and then come December we rescore with the benefit of familiarity and having (hopefully) got to see and try the watches on. 

At the same time each Councillor is asked to pick a top three, and it is these votes which are used to determine the overall winner. To be clear, initially only the '1st place' votes are considered, then if there is a tie the '2nd place' votes are consulted and if that still doesn't produce a winner I look at the '3rd place' votes. If that also fails... which it never has yet, I would have to use the final scores as there simply wouldn't be time to organise a second ballot.

--- --- --- --- ---

So a few days into December we had the last release of the year (the two two-tone Aquaracer Solargraphs) and once they were out of the way I sent everyone their forms and waited for the responses. As always there was a flurry of activity to start with and then the votes slowed to a trickle. Disappointingly only 22 of the 30 Council members actually submitted their votes before the deadline*, but 22 is enough and between them they produced the closest finish in WOTY history; indeed it came down to just one third place to decide which watch was the ultimate champion for 2024!

*Actually it was 21, but one sneaked in the next morning and I let it go (in case you're wondering it wasn't critical otherwise I might have had to reconsider, but I had already calculated the scores so unfortunately their scores didn't count in the final totals)

So what do you think... did the Council vote as expected and crown the Hodinkee Seafarer... or did the Porsche 963 Extreme Sports Carrera take the title? 

Perhaps the Gold Panda Glassbox stole it out from under all of them.... or did the Council finally turn tradition on its head and vote for a watch that isn't a Carrera?

Could one of the six 2024 Monacos have gotten the nod... or could it really be that in this 20th Anniversary year of the Aquaracer that a left-field runner finally emerged to steal the win?

Oh the suspense...

It's killing me...

OH MY GOD IT ACTUALLY WON! 🥳🥳🥳

Woop woop! Yes my friends the Time & Tide 'Sundowner' Aquaracer took the crown! Finally something that is neither retro nor a Carrera.... and it only took five years! 

I'm not going to pretend I'm not pleased, the Aquaracer was only my third place pick (a very important third place though, as we will see below) but it was easily my favourite of the top three. And while I can't really get fully behind any watch that wears one of those Godawful NATO strap thingies, at least we know it's perfectly possible to retro fit this one with TAG Heuer's titanium bracelet. 😏

CLICK TO ENLARGE

As you can see, in total there were 64 votes cast (one person elected to only vote for a winner due to time constraints) and only 4 watches managed to score more than one '1st place', despite a whopping 30 watches taking place votes. That means 37% of this years releases managed to secure a vote - which is quite incredible! 

But what of the scores, I've already told you (in my last post) that the winner of this year's title scored less than 8/10, indeed the Sundowner only managed 7.7/10, which is pretty poor when you see where that puts it on the overall list (it isn't even in the top three Aquaracers!).

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Even more intriguing is the score recorded by the aforementioned 'favourite'; 6.8/10 puts it way down the list and in case you're wondering I actually scored it a solid 7/10. I got to try that one on at a TAG Heuer boutique in November (naturally an 'On the Wrist' post is coming) and as much as I didn't really want to like it, I actually didn't hate it and the 'TIDE' button was nowhere near as oversized and ridiculous looking as I thought it would be.

So finally here below are the scores for all the watches you didn't get in the last post... 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Quite an impressive showing from the 2024 Aquaracers, I think we can agree! But only four out of eighty one '2024' releases were deemed worthy of at least a 7/10... wow. That is quite the bitter pill to swallow... and kinda backs up what I said in the previous post about how confused I am that everyone in the wider watch world is saying 'TAG Heuer is back'. But then I'm no fan of these weird new Glassbox Carreras, so...

Well, that's it from me for 2025, I will be back on January the 1st (I have decorating to do for the next few days - good times!), so I will hopefully see you all then. I wonder when the first TAG Heuer of 2025 will come out?