TAG Heuer has quietly been on a hot streak in recent years, and now, with Julien Tornare (formerly of Zenith) at the helm, they are well poised to continue with that momentum. Among the hallmark releases has been a new glassbox Carrera in 39mm, with a domed crystal and shapely dial underneath following its contours. This collection has managed to preserve the roots of the Carrera design DNA, while pushing it into a new generation at the same time. It doesn’t look old-school, but it’s clearly a Carrera. This has set the collection up for a bright future, and at Watches & Wonders this year, TAG Heuer took it a step further with a new silver and black ‘panda’ colorway that honors Jack Heuer’s iconic 7753 SN design.
In addition to the silver and black reference, we also got a new Skipper Carrera in a rose gold case, which works exceptionally well. But there’s something special about this particular colorway that puts it among the best of the show for me. I mentioned the 7753 SN from the ‘70s, which featured a light silver dial with a subtle sunray texture with a pair of black registers hosting the running seconds at 9 o’clock, and a 30 minute totalizer at 3 o’clock. This watch used the manually winding Valjoux 7730, and was part of the broader collection of dual register Carrera references that were offered in a variety of configurations, all featuring some mixture of silver and black (Silver Noir as the SN or NS denotes).
The new design brings this concept into the modern glassbox Carrera in an interesting manner, including one detail that sets this watch apart from the other designs represented. The perimeter of the dial slopes downward and away from the dial’s center, and host a tachymeter scale that we typically see in a bezel insert or beyond the chapter ring, and here TAG Heuer have rendered this portion of the dial in black, further differentiating it from the main hub of the dial. It acts as something of an internal bezel (though obviously cannot be rotated), and pushes the inner dish of the dial structure into a visually tighter space. This accents the black registers and dials up the sporting nature of the design as a whole (which was its impetus, after all). A few red accents tie everything together and the result is a novel take on not only the SN concept, but of the new glassbox design.
Unlike the original, this uses TAG Heuer’s automatic TH20-00 movement with 80 hours of power reserve. This is set into a steel 39mm case that measures 14mm in thickness thanks to the highly domed sapphire crystal. The frame wears quite well, and the brushed surfaces of the case are set off against polished sections without going over the top. I will say that I’d love to see a rendition of this very watch done in blasted titanium, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
You might also notice that the two registers in black are both totalizers for the chronograph, with the minutes at 3 o’clock, and the hours at 9 o’clock. The running seconds is nested within a ‘hidden’ sub dial at 6 o’clock, which also hosts a discreet date aperture.
Overall this is a beautiful take on another classic Carrera design, and further illustrates just how strong of a foundation TAG Heuer have built with this new 39mm glassbox design. This new TAG Heuer Carrera Chronograph is available to purchase now, and is priced at $6,650. TAG Heuer