As it's coming up to Christmas, I thought it might be fun to look at the TAG Heuer website with a view to picking something I'd like for Christmas.. and since nobody's actually going to buy me a brand new TAG Heuer for Christmas, I figured I might as well throw it completely open with no budget restriction whatsoever.
I also thought it might be fun to ask a few other people as well, so I asked most of the Calibre11 forumites I've interviewed for the blog and a few more, I also asked my friend Lee (who isn't really into watches like we are but he does have a Formula 1 chronograph), my friend Rich (who owns a few watches now, including a Tudor Pelagos LHD and a TAG Heuer 2000 Series) and last but not least my wife (who, as you know, owns several TAGs, an Omega and an Oris).
What I didn't consider when asking this question was that, a) people will naturally be drawn to the 'most expensive' watches so it's hard to tell if people are choosing it because it's their absolute favourite of the current range or is it partly because it's otherwise unobtainable and b) if someone already owns their favourite watch then maybe they are picking their second favourite because they've already got the one they really want.
Still, it's not a clinical experiment it's just a bit of fun and it has inspired a possible 'Council of Opinion' going forward - more on that at a later date!
So... it's perhaps not a massive surprise that the Nanograph (the most expensive watch on the website at the time) did very well indeed in this little poll with a total of three votes out of eighteen. Having said that and underlining what I said earlier, my friend Lee sent me pictures of four different Carreras and said 'whichever one of these is the most expensive'.
The Montreal Carrera and the Monaco Gulf Edition also did well with two votes each but after that it was a varied selection with the Historique Monaco, the black dial Monaco Heuer 02, the Gulf Formula 1 and the blue tortoiseshell bezel Aquaracer all finding favour with one person each.
Similarly one person chose the silver dial variant of the new Elegant Carrera (CV2A1AC) and one person picked a cool ceramic Heuer 02 Carrera (CBG2A90).
But the clear winner of this little poll, with four votes was the newly released solid gold Carrera 'Jack Heuer 88'. I guess that was entirely predictable since it ticks an awful lot of boxes for a lot of people and is a limited edition of 188 pieces into the bargain. Unfortunately it's also fairly unobtainable to most of us due to its £15,300 price tag...
As for my wife. well she scrolled down the page several times with a 'not really arsed about any of these watches' look on her face and eventually announced that 'if she had to pick one' she'd probably go with the purple Carrera with the textured dial. Truth is, she wouldn't because it's too big for her wrist, but I couldn't be bothered to enter into further discourse as clearly the website wasn't offering her anything particularly exciting.
I have to say, the women's range is a bit ho-hum at the moment, with far too many mother of pearl dial Formula 1s on offer and far too many unremarkable Aquaracers littering up the place. She did sort of like the blue Aquaracer with the wavy dial on the blue rubber strap, but the brown 'unisex' Monaco with the brown diamond dial on a brown strap clearly offended her sensibilities and she declared confidently that 'no woman would want to wear that!'.
I'm starting to think that maybe I should interview my wife.
So then it was my turn and to be honest I expected to have a lot more too choose from. One of the problems for me is that I'm not that keen on the Heuer 02 Carreras, I prefer the layout of the Heuer 01 and of course I already have a CAR2A1Z so anything that looks too much like that is out. I didn't really love the Nanograph when I tried it on either, so that's out as well and a lot of the very recent releases have been a little bit uninspiring.
All the funky textile strap and ceramic bezel Aquaracers have disappeared and while I do like the white dial Calibre 5 'Explorer' Aquaracer, at £1950 it seems a little cheap to choose that when I can choose literally 'anything'. Which brings me to the new tortoiseshell bezel Aquaracers... admittedly I haven't seen either of them yet, but the red/black one looks quite nice in pictures. But still, if I'm getting a free choice I feel like I ought to go with something a bit more upmarket.
The blue dial Monaco Heuer 02 is a very nice watch, as is the Gulf version and I don't have a Monaco, so this would be a good choice, but... the one watch which catches my eye every time I scroll through the pages is the CV2A83 Calibre 16 Carrera. You could of course argue that it's simply the PVD version of my CV2A80 Calibre 16 Carrera (and not unlike the CAR2A1Z come to that) and for that there is no real answer or argument. My only defence is that it's just about different enough to make it reasonable to own both, albeit I probably wouldn't if I had to buy it myself because if I did I wonder how much I would wear the titanium version...
**NB: If you share my enthusiasm for the CV2A83, you can pick it up at a discount from the TAG Heuer Bicester Village Outlet, check it out here..
One thing that did surprise me was that nobody picked the silver dial 160th Anniversary Carrera, but then at least one person who picked the 'Montreal' chose it as a partner to the 'Silver' dial they already owned, so maybe that goes some way to explaining that?
So, the question is - what would you like for Christmas?
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