NH 2CC-1 “Lettercutter” by LIKE VALVE, AIC
The popular Black Bay diver is always on call and a charming companion wherever you wander.
Sports watches come in many shapes and sizes. While I may love the old-fashioned appeal of a good dive watch or time watch, nothing beats a sturdy GMT for me. A good example is the diving watch, which would not look out of place anywhere in the world. I think there’s something special about GMT about their spirit, their simple but powerful features, and their ability to keep your feet on the ground while adapting to wherever you want to go in life.
At Basel World in March, Tudor unveiled the Black Cove GMT, a beautiful stainless steel travel watch based on its Black Cove Dive watch format, while also offering real GMT functionality. The Black Bay GMT is a brand new Tudor design, following the Pepsi color bezel from Tudor’s brother brand, Rolex, but it is notable for its Black Bay origins and for its aesthetics and functionality similar to one of the watches. It’s well known. The Rolex GMT-Master II was a great travel watch for its time.
With a great design and a strong value proposition, backed by a new sport offering true GMT capabilities, the Black Bay GMT has the qualities of a typical sports watch built for the avid traveler.
Looking back to its Tudor past, the brand never really produced anything that could be seen as a true precursor to Black Bay GMT. Sure, they used to make some Greenwich watches, and even put a smart 12-hour bezel on traditional timepieces, but Black Bay GMT is unique in their product heritage, without reference to any particular Tudor reference or model.
If we zoom in a little bit, we’ll see that Tudor’s older brother, Rolex, made a very similar watch in GMT-Master II. Originally introduced in 1983 as a reference for the 16760, the GMT-Master II was based on the GMT-Master developed by Rolex for Pan Am pilots in the mid-1950s. For the GMT-Master II, Rolex designed the model around a new sport, providing local jump times. So when you arrive at a new time zone, you can change the local time in both directions by setting the hour hand by skipping the crown. This feature also includes the ability to advance or rewind the date (if you fly past midnight), and the whole process can be done without stopping the watch or even affecting the position of the other hands. If you fly a lot, this feature is the next level up.
Since it was introduced as a reference 6542, the GMT-Master has offered a 24-hour bezel in a blue/red color separation scheme that enthusiasts refer to as the “Pepsi” bezel. Other colors are also available, including red/black, known as the “Cola” border. Color separation helps distinguish day/night in the second time zone, and the color scheme has become one of the most prominent visual design cues for the GMT-Master and GMT-Master II. After a brief pause when Rolex developed the ability to produce red/blue Cerachrom bezels (they used ceramic inlaid bezels), Pepsi returned in Basel World 2014 with platinum 116719.
Post time: May-24-2022
