FEATURE: My Top Five Orange Dial TAG Heuer Watches

 

Orange.... it's a difficult colour to work with, as the Bamford Basketball Carrera above clearly demonstrates! Wow, what a disaster that thing is, I wouldn't even know where to start, so let's move on swiftly before I start ranting again!

I must admit I was slightly surprised just how few orange dial TAG Heuers there were to choose from (and by orange dial I do mean orange dial, not black with some orange bits on) I was expecting at least ten to choose from, but in actual fact there were barely enough to make a choice of five! The two that you might be expecting but which are absent are the the 2000-era Formula 1 pieces, namely the CAH1113 and WAC1213... I know those watches have their fans, but for me both of those have some questionable design choices and so they were left languishing on the sidelines.

Thankfully there are other orange dial watches which are much more successful in their execution, so lets take a look at those instead!

#5. FORMULA 1 (CA1214.BA0493)

Hailing from the late 1990's these brightly coloured dial Formula 1 chronographs are very collectible and hold their value much, much better than their black or white dial contemporaries. One of these orange dial CA1214s is currently to be found on the EST1897 website, but you'll need £995 to make it yours. On the other hand, black or white dials can probably be had for about half of that. This orange one is nice, but I think I prefer the yellow (they were also available in blue and red).

#4. FORMULA 1 (WAH1012.BT0717)

A relatively new one to me, I only came across this a few months ago and was rather surprised, in fact at first I questioned whether or not this was a genuine TAG Heuer watch as they don't appear in any catalogues. In the end it checked out and this orange dial is a nice variation on the black/white and full lume dial versions which were also available in this range. Would be great to see one in real life and it would be interesting to know what the lume is like on this one, assuming there is lume (on the hands at least)?

#3 ALTER EGO (WP131R.FC8152)

Another super rare piece which again does not feature in any catalogue anywhere. In total I've only managed to find three photographs of this one and one of those was really bad quality, showing a torn orange strap! Would be interesting to know what the story is with this model, was it a limited edition? Was it made for a particular country, like The Netherlands for instance? Who knows? But I really enjoy seeing Alter Egos in unusual colours, rather than the bog standard kind of black, blue and mother of pearl pieces that are ten a penny on eBay. I would love to be able to pick one of these up for my wife, but I think the chances of that happening are pretty slim... 

#2 AQUARACER 500M (WAJ1113.BA0870)

Until recently this was always my favourite orange dial TAG Heuer model, albeit when I actually got to see one in Bicester Village a couple of years ago the dial was a lot darker than I expected and quite 'matt' as well which I was a little unsure about. What I really liked about it though was the fantastic contrast between the orange dial, the black bezel and the white lume markers and hands with their black outlines. It's so bold and as recently as the end of last year I was seriously considering trying to track one of these down, but since I already had the same watch in the grey dial I was in two minds... 

#1. FORMULA 1 (WAZ101A.FC8305)

So no prizes for guessing that this was going to be number one, I'm sure it was quite obvious... simply put, this one takes everything I liked about the WAJ1113 and improves on it. I love the 12 and 6 markers and the dial loses its horizontal slats but gains the subtle 'asphalt' texture that is all the rage with TAG Heuer at the moment. It also dispenses with the annoying cyclops and moves the date back to the 'normal' side of the dial, although that I don't mind so much. The ceramic bezel with it's orange highlight and white minute markers really looks the business too and really the only complaint I have about this watch is the strap, which looks great but feels disappointingly uncomfortable.

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