CAR2A1AC.FC6416
The last time I was in the TAG Heuer boutique in Sheffield I caught sight of a Manchester United branded Carrera Heuer 01 and noted that the badge looked a bit more tastefully executed than normal; what I didn't realise at the time was that I was looking at the new 99 piece limited edition Carrera made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Manchester United achieving the 'triple crown' in 1999! Truthfully, I was not aware that such a thing existed, which rather makes me wonder... if I, as someone who spends literally hours a day making it my business to know, then how did I not discover this? Is it some kind of secret watch that only certain people get to hear about? Bah! :-/
Anyway, if like me your interest in football ceased when you discovered cars, girls and rock music... the 'Triple Crown' is not unlike what Fernando Alonso is trying to achieve by winning the F1 World Championship, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indy 500, except with football. So basically it means they won 'The Premier League', 'The F.A.Cup' and 'The UEFA Champions League'; in the process becoming the only English football club ever to do so. Pretty impressive I'm sure you would agree?
It's a nice looking watch too, which isn't something I've been able to say about all the Manchester United branded watches that TAG Heuer have made over the last few years... that red strap would look pretty rad on my own Heuer 01 I'm sure, and as I noted earlier the logo is finally rendered in a way where it doesn't look completely out of place and generally obnoxious. I'm not having a go at TAG Heuer here, Manchester United's logo is not, I'm afraid, a thing of beauty as far as I'm concerned and I consider it something of an achievement that they've made it look this good here.
The back is nicely done as well, although as ever I fail to see the point of putting display backs on watches if you're going to print all over them, you might just as well give it a normal caseback and knock £50 off the price. As you can see from the image above, the watches are marked 1 of 99 rather than individually numbered, which is the way things are done these days, whether you like it or not. I guess it doesn't really matter, but it does take the fun out of it slightly as some people like to get meaningful or low numbers, but then I guess it does mean that nobody has to have number 86...
The CAR2A1AC is a full sized Heuer 01 at 45mm and as such it won't be to everyone's taste, but I surely love the feel of mine on the wrist and the design of the strap really helps minimise the 'oversizeness' of the watch, it helps enormously that the lugs blend into the strap without a step as it makes the overall feel very cohesive, very similar to a Microtimer actually,which is also a big watch that wears exceptionally well on the wrist due to a very wide strap.
Oddly, both Goldsmiths and Mappin and Webb are listing the regular 'Red Devil' Carreras under this part number, the Mappin and Webb listing even stating it is limited to 99 pieces - surely some confusion there then? I think they are mixing this model up with the CAR2A1J.FC6416, which has a red devil logo and red baton markers on the dial instead of the full, gold Manchester United logo.
It's a nice watch then, with black gold hands, a 50 hour power reserve and I presume a ceramic bezel (though I cannot seem to be able to confirm this), even so it seems to be quite a chunk dearer than a regular Carrera Heuer 01 at £5395. Also, I can't quite get my head around the concept of celebrating a 'Triple Crown' victory that happened at the tail end of the last century... I mean, I can't imagine TAG Heuer releasing a watch to celebrate Mika Hakkinen's 1998 and 1999 back to back F1 World Championships... or let's imagine they had jumped from McLaren to Williams instead of Red Bull, could you honestly see them celebrating that teams domination of F1 during the early to mid 90s? It seems a bit odd really, and unfortunately highlights the teams rather less than stellar record since the departure of Alex Ferguson.
All that said, this is definitely my pick of all the Manchester United branded TAG Heuers released thus far, hopefully they will only get better from here.
No comments:
Post a Comment