VIDEO: TAG Heuer's 2025 W&W Releases by The Watch Society

 

ON THE WRIST: TAG Heuer Carrera Panamericana Rallye Limited Edition Tourbillon

TAG Heuer Boutique / Meadowhall, Sheffield 15th March 2025

When I walked into the Meadowhall boutique a couple of weeks ago it never for one second entered my head that they might have the TAG Heuer x Porsche Carrera Panamerican Rallye Tourbillon in stock. Not for one second! With only 255 pieces worldwide, I figured this would much more likely be found in the flagship Oxford Street store down in London, but after looking at the new blue dial Solargraph I turned around and there it was. Crikey!

I suppose given my surprise I should have been more excited, but honestly I wasn't actually that fussed. Nevertheless I decided I ought to at least have a look and see how it felt to wear a £30,000 Porsche tourbillon on the wrist and, well... yeah. It's okay I guess.

My feelings about the glassbox Carrera are well established by now (which is probably not good for me, because I can imagine there's going to be plenty more of the bloody things and probably starting tomorrow on the first day of Watches & Wonders 2025), at least this one is in the 42mm case so it doesn't look like a child's toy on my 7.1/2" wrist.

I dunno. I can't help thinking it photographs better than it looks in person, because I look at these photos and think it looks quite funky and cool, but when I actually had it on I wasn't remotely excited by it. In fact I remember squinting at the dial desperately trying to see the 'sparkly' bits... I mean they're there, but if you didn't know you might not notice them for a while.

I don't really know why, but my photos suggest the dial is white. It isn't, it's definitely a silver/grey colour, but I kinda think it might look better if it was white (albeit then it wouldn't really reflect the colour of the Porsche Panamericana Rallye's wheels I suppose). 

I appreciate the effort that's been put into this one, and it's genuinely nice to see a watch that looks completely different to everything else in the range. It does feel like you are getting something 'special' here, rather than just a standard watch with 'Porsche' on the bezel and a £2000 price hike, and to be fair to TAG Heuer all the Porsche branded watches have been pretty unique and special I dunno, I can't really put my finger on what's wrong with this one... maybe it's the confusing contrast of modern and vintage design cues, or perhaps that mixed with the black and yellow strap, which I find looks rather strange here on a Carrera (much more suited to a DLC cased Aquaracer). 

And then there's the price. When this came out the RRP seemed absolutely insane, but since then TAG Heuer have increased all their tourbillons by up to £10,000 so the price now seems more 'in-line'... but of course still utterly bonkers! I just don't get why anyone would pay £30,000 for a watch like this, when you think what else you can buy. Are tourbillons really that big a deal anymore? Does anyone really care?

Watchfinder are still holding the price of their pre-owned blue glassbox tourbillon at under £14,000 despite the list price rocketing to around £30,000 and they still can't sell it, which perhaps gives us an inkling as to why this one is sitting in a display case in Sheffield (the 6th largest city in the UK, in case you were wondering). And how long will it take for TAG Heuer to shed that 'cheapest Swiss tourbillon' label that they so proudly wore until relatively recently? Perhaps they figure that if no one is buying them at £20,000 they might as well charge £30,000 and have them act as a 'halo' product to make the standard glassboxes look affordable? It's certainly one way of looking at it. 

As for this one, I'm afraid it's not for me...

SPOTLIGHT ON: TAG Heuer's New £3500 Bracelet...

 

Well Watches & Wonders has arrived, and with it an absolute avalanche of new TAG Heuer releases (18 in total, can you believe that?) and understandably most of the attention has fallen on the new 38mm Formula 1 Solargraphs, but there were other releases... a bevvy of new 'in-house' Carrera Day/Dates, a rather odd looking teal-dialed Carrera GMT and a very limited edition white ceramic Monaco Rattrapante (which you almost certainly won't be able to afford even if you really wanted one).

As usual, we'll be getting to all these in due course (the Council of Considered Opinion has already begun musing over the non-limited edition Formula 1s), but something caught my eye while perusing the new releases on the TAG Heuer website. 

These two watches are identical, they are both WDA2111 heads, but the one on the right has a steel bracelet and the one on the left has small gold links in between the larger main links. And yet one costs £3500 more than the other. Is this a mistake? I mean, if you bought the steel watch and decided you wanted to upgrade to the two tone bracelet are they seriously going to charge you £3500 for a bracelet?

I'd like to think it was a mistake and that at some point someone would realise and correct the price, but I honestly don't think it is. Recently we saw a couple of 36mm Carreras with gold elements rocket in price (and I mean rocket, 40%!) for no real fathomable reason. Yes we know gold is expensive but it doesn't justify this kind of nonsense.

The TAG Heuer website doesn't actually tell us how much gold is in this bracelet, and it also doesn't show the back side of the bracelet either*, but I very much doubt these parts are solid gold. They are most likely capped, but even if they were solid I struggle to accept that any TAG Heuer bracelet can cost £3500. 

*The Watches of Switzerland website does however, and the back is steel, so definitely not solid.

A standard steel bracelet usually costs somewhere between £180-£300, while a titanium bracelet for the Aquaracer Solargraph costs about £500... if I was to guess the price for this bracelet I might have said £750, or maybe £1000 if I was feeling really generous, but this is hilarious.