ON THE WRIST: Tudor Black Bay Pepsi GMT

7983RB-002

Harrods / London, 9th March 2019

This was something I'd pretty much forgotten about to be honest, the Tudor range as a whole doesn't do much for me (the Pelagos is the only Tudor I would buy) but my friend Rich is more into it. I can't remember exactly how this came about, I remember we were looking at a couple of Zeniths and talking with Harry (I think his name was, nice chap) in Harrods and we got on to the subject of the Harrods special editions and the Tudor Black Bay GMT (it's all coming back to me now).

Tudor Black Bay 'Harrods' Numbered Edition

Harry told us that those two models were the hottest tickets for them, and that they get maybe 15 phone calls a day about them. I was curious as to how, given there was a waiting list for the Harrods Black Bay that they had two on display. Apparently they are owned by Harrods and used by management for functions etc, and otherwise used as display models.

While I'm not a fan of the Black Bay in general, I do rather like the Harrods model, the green bezel really sets it apart and they've selected just the right tone of green (unlike Bvlgari and Roger Dubuis, both of whom completely screwed their models up in my opinion. Roger Dubuis had two different greens on his watch and neither of them was even close to being correct!). I think it's massively important that they got this right as that green is a Harrods calling card and when you see this Black Bay you instantly know what it is and what it represents. Unlike some other brands - including TAG Heuer's white dial 'Harrods' Autavia.

But I think I have spoken about this watch before, so let's concentrate on the Tudor Black Bay GMT.

As you probably know, the watch was released to a great kerfuffle at last year's Baselworld show, right around the same time as Rolex released their new Pepsi bezel GMT. People were aghast, what on Earth where they thinking stealing some of Rolex's thunder? Well, you know what? They really didn't. Rolex Pepsi on a Jubilee bracelet is trading well over list price thanks to Rolex's draconian control and manipulation of the market, but then you can't just walk into a shop and buy a Tudor Pepsi either!

Let's be clear, this watch wasn't on display, it was under the counter and we weren't allowed to remove the film covering the dial (Harry peeled it back for us about half-way so we could see the colour of the bezel properly, but that was as far as he would go). I'm not sure if this watch was for sale or if it was put by for someone. It seems the waiting list for the bracelet version of the watch is so long that people are resorting to buying the watch on this (fairly hideous) brown leather strap and then presumably finding a bracelet elsewhere and switching it out.

Before I continue, I know in the past I have been very scathing about brown leather straps and often it was meant in jest. I know some people didn't like it, and that's fair enough. But this strap... it's not very nice (in my opinion) but more importantly, it really doesn't go with the watch. You have a black dial, a very dark red, a very dark blue and they've matched it with a sort of reddy-brown strap. Surely a black strap would have been better? Look at that picture above, I don't like NATOs, but I would take the black NATO over that brown strap any day of the week.

The Tudor GMT on the brown leather strap costs £2570, which is about £200 less than the bracelet version. You can probably get one in a month or two, whereas the bracelet is probably more like 6 months. Harry did tell me that if you order from Harrods your name goes on the list and you will be supplied in order, they don't allow queue jumping for special customers. Do I believe that? Not entirely sure. I'd like to believe it... but knowing what kind of dubious shenanigans Rolex are capable of, I think I'd take it with a tiny grain of salt.

Ignoring the strap then, I was quite surprised how dark the colours on the bezel actually are. Not that the photographs are misleading, I think it's more that I'm used to seeing the brighter red and blue on the Aquaracer Calibre 7 and also on the Rolex Pepsi (not that I've actually seen a 2018 Rolex Pepsi - obviously!), so that was surprising. Other than that it looks kinda small, it's 41mm but it wears smaller than that I'd say.

Obviously I was slightly hindered by the film, but I really didn't think the dial looked that nice close up, it definitely looks more impressive in these photographs. I'm really not a retro kinda guy and I'm definitely not a Rolex kinda guy, so a lot of this is perhaps lost on me, but from a purely objective point of view it didn't 'impress' me that much at all. It just didn't strike me as being anything 'special' somehow, irrespective of whether it appeals to me (and there are plenty of watches I can appreciate without actually liking).

I'd really to see the watch on a bracelet actually, I think it might look a lot better overall, but as it stands I was even more underwhelmed by this than the Seiko diver I tried on about an hour prior. I think it's partly because the bezel looks more modern than the dial, and on the strap it emphasises the retro dial too much, so it looks a bit odd. I know Pepsi bezels have been around for a long time, but it's the execution, and maybe the font on the bezel? I'm not sure... something doesn't quite work somehow, but again I think it might work on the bracelet.

Hopefully at some point in the future the watch will appear in the stores and I'll finally be able to find out. In the meantime I think if I was going to sign my name on a waiting list for a Black Bay, I think I'd still be choosing the Harrods edition.