OWNED: CAU2012 Formula One Calibre 16 Chronograph

 

CAU2012.FT6038

It took me about two years to track down one of these, and when it finally fell into my lap it was completely unexpected. I went to Bicester Village one Saturday with my wife, and while we were there she had been looking at an Ice Cream tub shaped handbag in Kate Spade. I think it was coming up to her birthday so I contrived to visit Bicester on the Monday during the day so I could pick one up for her without her knowing. 

At the same time, I wanted to go back to Bicester because on that Saturday I had seen the yellow dial Calibre S Aquaracer and despite trying it on, I had failed to purchase it and I was kicking myself a little, or I at least needed another look just to confirm my decision (or maybe not). Before I left work I was joking with my friend that I was going to come back with the Calibre S 'unless by some miracle that Orange F1 has arrived since Saturday'... You can imagine my utter astonishment when I walked in to find the CAU2012 sitting in the cabinet right next to the Calibre S!

CAF7013.FT8011

The Aquaracer was a staggering affordable £960 or thereabouts, which considering I've seen them on eBay pre-owned for £1400+ was a VERY good deal. But of course, once I clapped eyes on the Calibre 16 the Aquaracer went out of the window - which I must say is a bit of a shame, because of course thus far I've never seen it again... (and now I'd like to).

Initially I was super happy with my purchase, but it quickly became apparent that the clasp on the FT6038 rubber strap that comes (only) with this particular watch was going to be a problem. Just like the one on my everyday F1 the clasp irritated the hell out of my wrist and I had to look for an alternative.

Unfortunately it wasn't possible to source a different clasp for that strap, so in the end I had to go to a basic 22mm rubber strap, in this case the BT0717 was pretty much my only option if I wanted a TAG branded strap.

BT0717

I have to say I'm not crazy about the BT0717 strap. On the face of it it's the same design as the BT0714, just a couple of mm wider, but in reality it's so much thicker and more chunky. It's so much harder to put on and getting the tail of the strap into the retainers is a pain in the ass. I mean once it's on, it's solid... but it's a little bit too solid really and lacks any sort of finesse.

But as I say, there wasn't really a whole lot of options available to me, just lately I've been considering changing the strap to an aftermarket model, either a carbon-fibre effect one or a perforated leather type, but I'm still mulling that over at present.... we'll see.

I've had a bit of a funny relationship with this watch to be honest. I've had it just over six months and more than any of my other watches this is the one that I've blown hot and cold with. At one point I even investigated trying to sell it, but I changed my mind in the end. Without a doubt the whole strap thing has tainted my purchase slightly and the one other thing that I find a massive disappointment is the lume. There just isn't enough of it. Literally the only lume on the watch is the hands. No markers, no 12 O'Clock pip, absolutely nothing at all. If it's sitting on a bedside table then good luck telling the time, because you got nothing to go on.

To be honest it never even occurred to me to ask about the lume, in the store I was just so excited to finally see one of these I wasn't thinking quite straight, it wasn't until I got it home that I realised just how stingy the lume was. I get that it's a Formula One and not an Aquaracer, but this watch retails for £2500 which is a considerable chunk of money, for that I think it should be properly lumed up. I think I was especially disappointed because I was expecting the hour markers to be orange lume as well.

For some reason if I haven't worn this for a while I get a distorted memory of what this watch looks like and then the doubts start creeping in and I start thinking should I cash it in, but then I take it out of the box and it impresses me all over again. The picture at the top of this post is a very good representation of the watch, much better than any 'full frontal' picture I've seen. Some might find the orange stripes on the pushers a bit OTT, especially with the orange crown line as well, but I must admit I kinda like it. For sure this is the absolute maximum amount of colour I ever want to see on a watch, and I could easily live with a little less, but even so, this is a fun piece.

I must admit I find the crown a little bit fiddly to screw down and the movement itself feels quite 'agricultural' when winding, but having spoken to other people about the Calibre 16 movement it seems that it's not unusual. The back is a solid black with some nice detailing, which looks so much better than a steel back on a black case. But then the clasp on the original strap was silver. Why would you do that? You make a bespoke strap which only goes on this watch and then you cheap-out on the clasp - I don't get it. 

I don't mind the silver buckle on an old fashioned buckle/pin-style strap, but if you're going for the deployment route, then for Heaven's sake do it properly. I just think it looks cheap as hell...

Despite my issues with the lume and the clasp, I still like this watch a lot. I don't understand why I always get these negative feelings towards it when I don't wear it, and of all my watches this is probably the one I would most likely sell first (aside from my everyday F1), which is not to say that I'm likely to sell, just that I'm really un-likely to sell any of the other four.

This is definitely a fun watch and it surprises me how badly it seems to hold it's value, I was lucky to pick this up brand new for £1750 or so, and it's probably worth around £1500-1600 considering it's condition (strap is basically unworn) so I'm not losing a whole heap, but if you paid list then you're not doing so well. I guess some people will love the orange and some people will really hate it, personally I really like it but I wouldn't choose this as an 'only' watch. I consider this a watch I wear out in the day at the weekends mostly, a summer-fun kinda watch.

I guess the fact that I was looking for this for so long put a lot of expectation on it, and the lume thing definitely bugs me a lot, but I'm hopeful that a change of strap might give it a new lease of life. I'm certainly going to be looking into that soon.

BUYING EXPERIENCE: BT0717 Strap

BT0714 (left) and the BT0717 (right)

After a very long search, lasting several years, I finally managed to get hold of CAU2012 Formula One Calibre 16. Despite the long search, or maybe partly because of it, I'm still rather on the fence with this one. When I see pictures of it I still think it looks great, but on the wrist it doesn't quite excite me as much as I'd hoped (and I still don't really understand why).

However, a similar thing happened with my WAH1110-0 (pictured above left) and it was largely because the strap, or rather the clasp on the strap, was utterly rubbish and irritated my wrist so much that I couldn't enjoy the watch and 'bond' with it (for want of a better word). Once I replaced the strap and it was comfortable to wear it transformed my attitude towards it completely and it became a valued part of my collection rather than an everyday beater, so I am hopeful that fitting its larger brother with a similar strap will have the same effect.

I'm still very disappointed that the only lume on the CAU2012 is on the hands. Ideally it should have lumed markers, but if not then I kind of wish it just had silver hands. The lume itself is great, but without markers it looks rather ridiculous and annoys me at the 'corner cutting' cheapness of it (and actually once you notice how odd the hands look on the otherwise fairly dark face, you can't un-notice it!). But anyway, let's not focus too much on that here because it may be that in a few months I will have fallen in love with this one like I have with my Microtimer...

...although I have to confess, when I was in the jeweller picking up my BT0717 strap I did enquire if I could trade the CAU2012 in for the second hand steel Grand Carrera I tried on ages ago - yep, they still have it. My reasoning was that as I'd bought it quite well, I might be able to flip it without losing much money - sadly the second hand items were sold on commission so they wouldn't take it in part exchange, I'd have to buy the Grand Carrera and then they would sell the F1 for me. Hmm..

(Interesting though, that that option is available. They charge 15% commission if the watch was bought from them and 25% if the watch was bought elsewhere. Given that they charge a fair bit more than Watchfinder (for example) those rates don't look too bad.)

Still, this was probably a good thing. Although I was actually hopeful of a deal (because I do still want a Grand Carrera), I can't help thinking I might regret selling the F1 without giving it every chance to win me over.

So having established that the clasp was terrible I started looking into my options. With a 22mm lug width the options were fairly limited if I wanted a genuine TAG Heuer strap, though there were plenty of 'eBay' options of varying style and quality. Strangely the CAU2012 has a unique rubber strap that isn't used for any other watch, which set alarm bells ringing. I searched for BT0717 (as I knew that was the 22mm version of the BT0714 I bought for the smaller F1) and it brought up just one watch.

CAH1012.BT0717

The BT0717 strap is used on this Formula One and also with a slight modification on the Kimi Raikkonen version. The Kimi F1 uses a BT0718 which has red highlights around the pin holes (and a red backing), which is quite cool - but not for an orange watch, and I'm not sure how available that strap is anyway, I suspect when you break it you have to replace with the BT0717 - but I don't know for sure.

The BT0718 Strap as fitted to the Kimi Raikkonen Formula One

So, having purchased my previous BT0717 from Michael Jones (Northampton), I gave them a ring and was quoted a very reasonable £48. Rachel there was very helpful actually and she contacted TAG to see if there was any other options like perhaps a different deployment clasp or strap that would fit. Sadly there wasn't, though I wished I'd enquired about the possibility of fitting the tyre tread strap found on the Senna Carrera. 

One issue there though that I wasn't quite sure about, was the fact that on this watch the lugs are closed in, unlike the Carrera where you can fit pretty much any strap without worrying. Since the CAH1012 looks similar I had to assume that it has the same basic case as the CAU2012 and that the strap would fit perfectly.  Thankfully I was right, though if not I was mentally prepared to 'make it fit', as my other options seemed less appealing. 

I did see a strap in Debenhams which had a lot of orange on it, and thought it might actually be a good fallback, but it was actually £70 and when I checked it was a lot more grey than I remembered, which would have looked a bit rubbish I think. My other possible route was a 'carbon fibre' effect strap, but thankfully the BT0717 fitted perfectly so I didn't have to go down that route.

The guy in the shop was rather bemused that I was changing the strap on a seven week old watch, until I explained the problem. He said that he had owned a Breitling in the past with the same issue, so it's obviously not just TAG who can fail at making clasps!

Despite only being 2mm wider that the BT0714, the BT0717 feels a lot more chunky and substantial. It's actually quite hard to get the tail end of the strap to fold under the retaining pieces, but I'm wondering if that might improve as the rubber wears in and softens up a bit. I can't remember what the BT0714 was like when I first had it, though it must be said I don't remember any struggles, and obviously this watch won't get anything like the wrist time so it will probably take a long time for any 'wearing in' to take effect.

Once it's on the wrist though it feels very secure and I actually think this strap looks better than the one which comes on the watch, so I can't really understand why they went to all the trouble to design and make a bespoke strap when they could have used this one? Of course, ideally they would have made this design with a (much better) clasp, but there you go.

So, to sum up, once again the service from Michael Jones was pretty good (it did take six weeks to come, but this was because TAG were out of stock and Rachel was very helpful with trying to source me an alternative strap) and the strap looks and feels fine (if a bit chunkier than is really ideal). So let's hope that wearing the CAU2012 on this new (comfortable) strap allows me to start enjoying this watch and I can get on with saving for my Grand Carrera rather than looking to trade up to it. Time will tell I suppose, and I guess at least if I do come to sell the CAU2012 at some point, the original strap will be in perfect condition!