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You may remember that Baselworld 2018 resulted in some 'leaked' prototypes of Calibre 5 and Calibre 7 Autavia which didn't exactly look that promising. As the weeks dragged into months and the months became nearly a year, it became apparent that perhaps those models weren't actually going to make the cut. And from my perspective, that was a good move!
So now, on the eve of Baselworld 2019 we find ourselves presented with a brand new variety of Autavia, this time called the 'Isograph' and containing the Calibre 5 movement, albeit upgraded with the carbon hairspring found in the recent Nanograph Carrera.
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TAG Heuer's social media teasing suggested a 'pilot' watch of sorts, and it is, kind of... well, ish. I mean it's got an oversized crown for sure, that looks like it's come off a Carrera. Thankully they've dispensed with the red stripe down the middle... and it's 42mm, which is sensible. I do wonder how many people really want those massive pilot's watches, granted a few collectors, but as a mass market item it's never going to wash.
My initial reaction when seeing this new model was - Oh, it looks like a Breitling. Which it kinda does, and given Breitling's aeronautical leanings I guess that was slightly inevitable. More specifically the numerals remind me of the Colt Skyracer, which is not something to be proud of unfortunately.
Thankfully though the Autavia's Arabic numerals are applied!
The second thing that struck me was, that something looked 'wrong'. That something turned out to be the TAG Heuer logo up there at the 12 position. The 'TAG Heuer' logo rather than the 'Heuer' logo... which on the face of it I should be happy about, even if it's going to annoy a lot of people. But the problem is, the new TAG logo is very clean, very sharp, very... modern, not to put too fine a point on it and consequently to me it looks a bit out of place on this retro dial. I get the reasoning behind it, this is a 'new' watch and not a re-issue so the Heuer logo wouldn't be appropriate, and not too long ago I did photoshop the new logo onto one of the Heuer Calibre 17 Carreras and it looked great, but this one, not so much. I guess it will look okay eventually, these things always settle in, but off the bat it seemed to look a bit off. It will be interesting to see how the target audience reacts, we've already seen Breitling change their logo back to their older design - unfortunately TAG Heuer are in this peculiar position of not having that to fall back on, or rather they choose not to fall back on it because it would anger the Heuer purists. Who would want to have to make these decisions?
The new Autavia comes in a selection of colours and straps, including for the first time a bronze model. You may remember the leaked bronze Autavia drawing from last year's Baselworld... this is probably one of the better looking new Autavias and I imagine this one will sell well - assuming TAG aren't too late to the bronze party?
On the face of it, these watches fill a gap in the TAG Heuer line-up, making the Autavia a more affordable proposition. With the steel case/steel bezel on a leather strap models starting at 3400CHF (Approx £2600) and topping out at 4200CHF (£3200) for the bronze case/ceramic bezel on leather TAG finally has something to offer the retro enthusiast for the price of a top line Aquaracer.
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