Tudor Pelagos, The day after tomorrow. An objective analysis.

I have contemplated the purchase of a 4matic Class-C Mercedes: 4 wheels drive, V6 diesel. The ultimate car, comfortable, dependable, compact, fuel saving. Perfect in the city, perfect on the highway, discreet, prestigious without being ostentatious.
Perfect overall. And utterly boring. The cold German perfection.

• All pictures of this articles was taken during my wachonista.com collaboration.

In fact, all the genius and the strength of this Tudor Pelagos is that it is the C Class Mercedes of watchmaking.

The perfect watch. The finishes, as warm as the bottom of the Kelvin scale, are perfect to a fault.

I have almost never had a watch so well finished and so undemonstrative in my hands (however, just for the sake of nitpicking, one could comment about the rendering of the dial and the fake bead on the bezel).

It is unanimous: divers in trouble waters love it for its functionality, notably its innovative wristband. Mundane tuxedoed swimming pool divers under influence love its sobriety; it allows them to feel like they are the dominant males  at respectable parties.

It reminds me of the IWC GST 120 (Cheesy as the name of a Renault from the 80’s).Actually, the Pelagos very much looks like it. The GST series was one of the most successful IWC from the Blümlein period.

The coldness of the German style stood in sheer contrast with the “drug smugglers-Miami Vice 80’s” styles still fashionable at the end of the 90’s in Swiss watchmaking (indeed, Swiss have always been slow to react, which usually benefits them).

Credit Photo, Purists:

French speaking Switzerland has something to do with France, but mostly with Germany, and although the project manager is Italian, the style of the Pelagos is definitely Germanic. When I wear this watch, it feels like I’m watching an episode of Derrick: Some perfect cops (Horst Tappert followed an intensive training course for young people – LIEN) driving perfect BMW Series 7, wearing Boss suits and carrying pristine Walter PPK, catching good looking thugs through perfect investigations. You know what? It is perfectly boring, no room for imperfection, none for the audience.

Everything fits too well: Chaos, the key to creativity and life, is nowhere. Chaos is what the Pelagos is missing.

Tudor did their best to hide the magnificence of their work under layers of dull colors.
One could argue it is trendy: while our parents, in the early 80’s, used to don Bozo-the-clown colors, we all wear raven black attires; the most rebellious among us go as far as wearing blue jeans…
If one carefully considers the paradigm of our 10’s, this “Zeigest” is the consequence of a social mutation never seen before: We are living in a period where technique and technology are ubiquitous, an era inching toward totalitarianism.
Tudor follows the trend as closely as possible, through a sensitivity out of reach of the common watchmaking brands, and proposes a watch with a fantastic execution, an uncompromisingly cold piece, rigorous, and finally absolutely boring for those who like spicy things.

The Tudor Pelagos is nonetheless a must have for collectors.

It is arguably the piece which best expresses the Zeitgest of the 2010’s.

Moreover, it is the apex of the gentrification of the Rolex Group’s productions. The Pelagos impersonates the return to the “Tool-credibility” of the Brand-with-the-crown, after a decade of Submariners with cold and tame designs .
This watch is therefore a success is terms of credibility, execution and adaptation to the market .

“A watch exists also because of its excessiveness”.

Its absolute perfection is indeed its most terrible flaw. Once, Foversta (Equation du temps) wrote:

My answer to this statement would be that a watch, akin to any concept or person (a watch is a tiny object used as a pretext to showcase gigantic concepts), mostly exists because of its excessiveness.
A Panerai Bronzo exists because of the excess of testosterone it borrows from Expendables 2, a Lange Datograph exists because of its Germanic over-classicism inspired by the movie “Queen Sisi”, a De Bethune DB25l exists as an extreme concept born from the visionary fanaticism of its creators… Every great watch exists mostly because it is excessive.

Hence this oxymoron: can perfection be excessive?

Here is my answer: rather than going for the boring V6HDI Mercedes Class-C, I opted for an E500 (LINK), V8 5.5L, 388hp, 391lb.ft of torque, an anti-environmental, oversized, prehistoric creation from a period when the OPEC declared increasing stocks of oil, a super-aggressive machine rumbling like the thunder. Thoroughly enjoyable.