FEATURE: What About a Proper Ayrton Senna Tribute Watch?

A while back I wrote a post about the numerous and varied selection of 'Senna' watches that TAG Heuer have put out over the years, but unfortunately nearly all of them have one massive flaw; Ayrton never wore a Carrera, a Link or even a Formula 1. He famously wore a two-tone S/EL on a brown leather strap, and later (briefly, and much less famously) a white dial, two-tone 6000 on a black leather strap. Furthermore, while the 6000 Series was a chronometer certified automatic, the S/EL was a quartz (with a partial digital display). So really, when you think about it the 'authenticity' of the Senna watches is pretty low.

I'm sure there's many a Senna fan who, rather than one of the recent offerings - as nice as many of them are, would love to get their hands on something similar to the genuine article. If you think about it the marketing opportunity would be huge, but on closer inspection there are a myriad of problems to overcome to make this a reality.

S25.706C

Firstly and most obviously, the S/EL is no longer in production. It was dropped, or rather 'evolved' into the 'Link' series in the late 1990s, and while the original 'Link' might have provided a reasonable base for a 're-imagined' Senna S/EL, the current model certainly does not. As nice as it would be to imagine it, I can't see the costs of bringing back the original case just for one high end model being justified.

So okay, that's not going to fly, lets use a Formula 1 case instead (as seen recently with the new 'Fragement Heuer 02' limited edition). After all, there have already been 'Senna' F1s fitted with the Link bracelet and they looked fantastic, so it's an easy and cost effective answer. Good, let's go with that.

So we need a cream dial (I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to make a dial reminiscent of the original S25.706C with rounded baton markers etc), we need 'Mercedes' hands (not a big deal I shouldn't have thought) a two tone Link bracelet and a gold serrated bezel... or we need to use a regular gold Formula 1 bezel. For the sake of argument, let's assume making an S/EL style bezel to fit the Formula 1 is a possibility and we end up with something like...

Obviously it would also have a gold crown, I did try and colour the crown gold but it looked terrible so I left it as it was... and speaking of the crown, I can't see it being a massive problem to produce a more S/EL shaped crown, since this one looks all kind of wrong to me. But that aside, not too bad so far - right?

So what about the movement then? Obviously as a high end collectible the most obvious engine would be the in-house Heuer 02. It has broadly the same layout of subdials, albeit in a slightly different place, but wait - one of the most identifiable parts of the 'Senna' watch is that it has an ani-digi display. I'm no watchmaker but I seriously doubt there's any way for TAG Heuer to attach a digital display to an automatic watch and make it run in sync. Mechanical movements simply don't operate to the same tolerances that quartz ones do, and while no doubt someone like Urwerk could pull it off, no doubt it would make the watch outrageously expensive (and by expensive I mean you could buy a massive house with it).

The Urwerk Atomic Clock and Paired Watch ($2.7m)

So then, why not ditch the Heuer02 and just go back to the original movement? I know there is at least one person on the Calibre11 forum who has had this kind of movement replaced in their original 2000 Series watch, so presumably they are still available? Maybe, maybe not... maybe there's only a limited number of them, but even if there's thousands of them sitting in boxes just waiting to be put into a watch there is still another (small) problem.

The original watch was 40mm in diameter (according to an eBay listing I've just found) but the Link bracelet F1 models are 43mm. This means the ani/digi sections of the dial would move further away from the edge of the case as they are fixed in place as part of the movement. The subdials would also move in, but that wouldn't be quite as bad as you could simply make the subdials larger to compensate and fit longer hands. Larger, longer hour, minute and chronograph hands would be easy enough I would have thought and so we are nearly there... well, assuming of course that the pushers on the current F1 case can be made to work with the old movement and that TAG Heuer could add two more pushers on the left hand side to work the digital screens (probably not, but hey...).

But most of the time Ayrton did not wear his watch on a bracelet, he wore it on a brown leather strap. Simple then, dump the bracelet and fit an off the shelf brown strap. Hmm, sorry but no. Because the original S/EL had an unusual shaped case, leather strap versions had the first link of a bracelet and then the strap was cut to fit around that (later on TAG made a more strap friendly version of the case, but I've never liked it) and I think to abandon that completely in favour of a basic brown leather strap would be a step too far.

When you actually look at Ayrton's watch, as cool as it is and as iconic as it is, it's anathema to everything that's saleable in a current watch. It's two tone for a start, which makes it expensive, it's on a brown leather strap (but needs a bespoke strap to fit with the one link bracelet), it's quartz AND ani-digi... and how would TAG Heuer price this model? Back in 1995 Ayrton's watch cost £1150, but I couldn't really see this project brought in under £3000 and TAG Heuer might even argue that that would be woefully under priced. And therein lies the real problem. It's one thing to charge big money for a like-for-like, pukka S/EL reissue, even one which was perhaps upsized to modern dimensions, but for something that is compromised here there and everywhere... well, perhaps not!

So realistically, your best bet is probably to hunt out an original, and perhaps send it back to TAG Heuer for a refurbishment if necessary... it will almost certainly still be cheaper than a re-issue would be and you'll be wearing the actual watch that Ayrton did rather than a well-intentioned but ultimately flawed homage.