VIDEO: TAG Heuer Carrera Heuer 02 GMT by Watches on You

ON THE WRIST: TAG Heuer Carrera Heuer02 GMT

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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.

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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!

FEATURE: Another Day Out in London...

As I wrote in my last post, my experience of owning the Grand Carrera GMT has not been all that I hoped and since I can’t really afford to just sit on a watch like that in the hope that one day I’ll change my mind, I decided to part exchange it with Watchfinder for a couple of watches that I will wear.

Watchfinder's central London store is in Avery Row (off New Bond St)

Of course I could have posted the watch to them, but since taking it in myself meant I could see my new watches (although I couldn’t have them until my watch has been checked out) and gave me an excuse to spend a day in London, well that seemed like a sound idea to me.

So I rocked up at Watchfinder first thing (with my wife in tow) and dropped off the Calibre 8 GMT, and I have to say I am super happy with the new additions that are coming. Both of them look way better than the pictures led me to believe and one of them looks absolutely mint, so that was an excellent start to my day.

The Wonder Room in Selfridges

Next stop was Selfridges, which was somewhat underwhelming if I’m honest. They have a reasonable collection of TAG pieces in there I guess, and I was excited to see the new Carrera Twin Time and to try it on – but there was no one manning the TAG stand so I wandered off figuring that by the time I got back there someone would have shown up.

Amazing hand-finished 'Frosted Gold' AP Royal Oak

I had a look at some of the (rather gaudy) Hublots and my wife was drooling over the ‘frosted gold’ Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks (though she definitely can’t afford one of those), but actually there wasn’t that much that was blowing me away. Audemars Piguet’s stand seems rather sparsely stocked and seems rather too heavily weighted towards solid gold pieces.

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Returning to the TAG stall there was still no one there, so I nabbed the man on the Longines stall who quickly came over and showed me the watch. It’s a nice watch, but if I was looking to spend that kind of money I think I’d want a bit better customer service than that to be honest.

A short step over the road is the TAG Heuer boutique and regular readers will remember that my first visit there was less than stellar. Quite different this time though, I’m happy to report. Evan single-handedly restored my faith in the Oxford Street store and was very friendly and happy to show me several watches including the carbon Carrera, the new Max Verstappen Formula 1, the Mikropendulum and the Oxford Street Limited Edition Carrera. I also spied the new Alec Monopoly Formula 1 (which looks better in the flesh than I expected) and the Tete de Vipere Tourbillon Carrera in there and also another unknown Formula 1 quartz with two red stripes down one side of the dial (I’m trying to get to the bottom of this*). I also had a good look at Evan’s own matt ceramic Carrera, which was very nice indeed and a great choice – no fingerprints on the matt ceramic!

TAG Heuer Mikropendulum

Leaving there (reluctantly – my wife was hungry) we headed back down Bond Street to ‘Richoux’ on Piccadilly, via Charbonnel et Walker to pick up some posh chocolates. I love C&W but I had to laugh when I saw on the receipt that their ‘pick and mix’ chocolates are £95 per kilo. Wow, that’s about 5 times the price of Lindt!

Burgers and awesome carrot cake consumed, we caught the tube to Kensington and walked around to the far end of Harrods for easy access to the watch room. Last time I visited Harrods the watch room was in a state of flux, but now it’s complete (although I’m sad to say that the Richard Mille boutique has disappeared) and slap bang in the middle of it there’s a very impressive 15ft high model of a Lange and Sohne split time, complete with display back! Impressive stuff.

Lange and Sohne Split Time model display.

We headed for the Hublot store and I have to say the watches in there were a lot nicer than the ones we saw in Selfridges. In fact my wife was rather taken with the ceramic ‘Black Magic’ range, the simplest of which cost about £7,000 and looked absolutely fantastic. In fact I think that might have superceded the TAG Heuer Link Bella Hadid as my wife’s dream watch!

This Hublot is really, really nice!

There were quite a few very nice pieces in there, including the Big Bang Unico Sapphire and also the Spirit of Big Bang Sapphire, both of which are incredible to look at, if way out of my price range. They also had a pink sapphire Unico as well and a ladies version with diamonds and a pink rubber strap, all at crazy prices – but still a lot cheaper than a sapphire Richard Mille to be fair.

Hublot Big Bang Unico Sapphire

They also had the Ferrari skeleton watches and the Depeche Mode watch too, and actually quite a few really nice pieces – and also some really weird ones with dials that look a bit like pentagrams… I’m not a fan of those, they seem awfully hard to read the time on them for a start.

Moving on we wandered into the Roger Dubuis store. I remember the first time we went in there we saw the ‘King Arthur’ watch (and several other very impressive pieces), but this time I somehow ended up trying on a watch that cost £137,000. Oddly enough, on leaving TAG Heuer I said to my wife that the Mikropendulum (£33,000) had taken over from the Royal Oak ‘Vampire’ as the most expensive watch I’d ever tried on, well that didn’t last very long!

The lady in the store asked me if I knew the brand and I said I did, but I wasn’t pretending to be a customer… however, the conversation led to me pointing to a Excalibur Spider Tourbillon and before you could say ‘this cost more than I paid for my house fifteen years ago’ I was slipping off my quartz 6000 Series (£300 from eBay no less!) and trying my best to hide it in plain sight on the tray in front of me.

It’s a cool watch right enough, but I can’t say with my hand on my heart that I’m gutted that I can’t afford it. I guess it’s so far out of reality that in a way there’s just no point wanting it, because I’m never going to get it, but while I do like Roger Dubuis watches I can’t help feeling it should have been a bit more affecting…. the white rubber strap seemed a little grubby as well!

The Fine Watch Multi-brand Room in Harrods

We had a quick scoot around the multi-brand showroom at the end of the corridor, but there wasn’t really anything particularly inspiring in there. Though having said that, some of the new Zeniths are pretty nice. I also spied a pre-owned Heuer Monaco in there (with the round pushers) which I believe was going for £19,000 or so. Not my cup of tea if I’m honest, but I’m sure some people would be well impressed with that.

Karl Lagerfeld Handbag

And that was pretty much it to be honest, we had a look in Karl Lagerfeld’s store on Regent Street, Superdry and Kate Spade and then made our way back to the train station. Definitely a day to remember, and I can’t wait to take delivery of my two new watches!

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*Turns out that mystery watch is in fact a WAZ1116, which oddly I can only find on a Honk Kong website called 'DFS'... (thanks to Tom and Evan at TAG Heuer for clearing this up for me - I just have to know!).

VIDEO: TAG Heuer Carrera Heuer02 GMT by Onewheee

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Carrera Heuer 02 GMT 'Batman' Chronograph

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Unlike the Autavia GMT (there's still some 'hopeful' speculation over on the Calibre11 forum that that one just may be a bad joke...) this new Carrera 'Batman' really looks the business. Sure the black/blue colour theme isn't to everyone's taste (but then what is?) and of course there will be the obvious criticism that the 'Batman' scheme is Rolex specific. 

Well, it's not as if TAG Heuer haven't used this scheme before, both the Formula One Calibre 7 and the David Guetta Special Edition both used the blue/black bezel scheme and not much was said. But then I guess it's a different matter when the scheme is rolled out on a luxury model on the very day that Rolex announce they are discontinuing their own version.

I'm sure there would have been murmurings too if TAG had used the 'Pepsi' red/blue bezel scheme, even if Heuer produced red/blue schemes way in the past does that actually mean anything to the majority of TAG's audience? It means something to Heuer afficionados sure, but it doesn't actually prove anything. So what, they made a red/blue bezel in the past, big deal. Like it or not the 'Pepsi' bezel (like the cyclops) is a 'Rolex' thing, and when the Aquaracer GMT came out, I'm betting a lot of people saw it in the stores and thought 'Oh wow, cool, it's like the Rolex (I can't afford) - I want one'.

After all, how many variations can there realistically be on a GMT bezel, you either go for a single colour, or you go for red/blue, blue/black or red/black, all of which are 'recognized' as Rolex schemes. Sure you could go mad and go for yellow/green, but you won't sell many outside of Brazil.

A lot of people are beefing about the Autavia GMT because 'historically' there's never been a non-chronograph version (ergo TAG are pissing all over the Autavia's legacy). That to me is irrelevant, the problem with the Autavia GMT is it's ugly and it doesn't work well as a design - to be fair, I feel the same way about the three handed (so called) Mutant Carrera module in the Connected. If the three handed Autavia looked nice, then I honestly wouldn't have a problem with it. 

I think to be honest, launching a three handed Autavia was always going to be slightly difficult, and it perhaps should have been approached a lot more carefully than by just chucking the Calibre 7 movement inside and giving it a divisive bezel design as a starting point. 

To be honest, I really don't think it matters two hoots whether Heuer made a blue/black bezel in the past or not, the question that matters is does it look good now?

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Clearly on the Carrera it looks great, I think I prefer it on the rubber strap, but that's been par for the course for me on just about every modern Carrera I've seen. I just don't like the way the lugs form a shoulder on the bracelet, when the rubber smooths it out in a more aesthetically pleasing way.

I must admit it would have been nice if they had built this in a titanium case with a thin blue band around it, following the design of the original 'red' version, but still perhaps it's better if the black half of the bezel stands out against the case more?

The bezel is ceramic, and so should stay scratch (but not fingermark) free and the case size is 45mm. It'll be interesting to see this one close up, it looks like that red GMT hand is really going to pop, but I still don't like the 4:30 date window on these new Heuer 02 Carreras. I guess it will become normal eventually, I mean my everyday Formula One has a 4:30 date window, but right now it seems to jar a bit. Still, better that than putting it at 12 which in my opinion is almost always a huge mistake.

I guess one can't help compare two 'Batman' style watches that have been launched so closely together (although 'launched' is perhaps a bit strong as we've still not seen anything truly 'official' from TAG as yet on the Autavia) and for me the clear winner is the Carrera. It just looks 'right', in contrast to the Autavia, which just looks 'wrong'. It will certainly be interesting to compare the pricing of the two models, surely the Autavia won't stand a chance against the 3-6-9 style Carreras unless there is a distinct price advantage, but will TAG want to undermine the Autavia's percieved value?