Tudor Shows Off Chameleon Black Bay Ceramic; Chopard Releases Special USA Mille Miglia GTS; Stowa Has A Surprisingly Small Customisable Pilot's Watch; Bangalore Watch Co. Pays Homage to Space

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. A slow day today so here’s something a bit different - a watch that you can’t buy even if you tried, but it serves as a starting point for an interesting discussion.

In this issue:

• Tudor Shows Off Chameleon Black Bay Ceramic Models Ahead Of Miami Grand Prix

• Chopard Makes A Special GTS Chrono For The Californian Version Of The Legendary Mille Miglia

• The New Stowa Flieger Verus 36 Is A Desirably Small And Surprisingly Customisable Pilot’s Watch

• Bangalore Watch Company Celebrates India’s Space Program With The New Meteorite Dial Apogee Karman Line

Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 30 seconds

👂What’s new

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Tudor Shows Off Chameleon Black Bay Ceramic Models Ahead Of Miami Grand Prix

Today, we’re starting off with something completely different. I like starting the newsletter with a release from a major brand and I don’t usually mind when the watch I’m writing about is a limited edition. Well, today, there seems to be only two examples of the watch ever made, and you likely won’t be able to purchase these, but there’s still a good reason to mention them. These are the Tudor Black Bay Ceramic “Chameleon” made for Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo of the Visa Cash App RB Formula 1 Team ahead of the Miami Grand Prix that will take place this Sunday.

This is not the first time we have seen a custom Tudor linked to the VCARB. Last year photos surfaced of Ricciardo wearing a black ceramic Tudor Black Bay with a really beautiful blue dial. Hopes were high that the team was wearing those watches as a teaser for the public and they would, at some point, enter regular production. This, of course, did not happen. So do expect the same to happen with this new watch. A shame, really.

This Chameleon Ceramic seems to be the exact same watch as the blue one, just with a new dial. It measures 41mm wide, a solid 14.5mm thick and it’s made out of black ceramic. On top is sapphire crystal surrounded by a diving bezel and you get 200 meters of water resistance.

The new dial has a story behind it, of course. It mimics the colorful livery of the VCARB racecar that they will use for the Miami race. There are only a few pictures available of the watch and looking at them, it seems that Tudor has missed out on a fantastic opportunity - to make the dial actually iridescent and to have it shimmer through all the colors of the rainbow. As it stands now, this looks to be a fixed chameleon color. That also works.

Inside is the MT5602-1U movement that beats at 28,800vph and has a power reserve of 70 hours. It also has METAS and COSC certifications. The watch comes on a rubber strap covered in leather.

Why, then, do I mention a watch you can’t buy, and not for a lack of trying? Well, first, because it’s a slow news day. But more importantly, whether you love it or hate it, and I’ll understand both sides, you can’t deny the fact that this version of a Tudor brings in a lot of levity to an otherwise very serious watch. Maybe it’s time for Tudor - and other high-end manufacturers - to embrace wild colors a bit more? You can see the watches on the Tudor Instagram for now.

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Chopard Makes A Special GTS Chrono For The Californian Version Of The Legendary Mille Miglia

The automotive and horological worlds are deeply intertwined in sponsorship. The link between TAG Heuer and Formula 1 is undeniable, just like Rolex’s sponsorship of many, many car events. But a more niche watch brand is needed for a more niche race, something that would appeal to the connoisseur. One such race is the legendary Mille Miglia, a race that runs a thousand miles through the beautiful countryside of Italy and its treacherous roads. And for the last 30-something years, their close partner and race timer has been Chopard. Now, Chopard is releasing a watch to honor their partnership with the American cousin of the Mille Miglia, the California Mille which they have been sponsoring for six years. This is the new Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille.

The watch comes in the same case as the regular Mille Miglia GTS Chronograph, which means it’s pretty large at 44mm wide and 13.79mm wide. This being a steel Chopard, you know it’s made out of Lucent steel, which is their proprietary steel blend that is supposed to shine way more than regular stainless steel. The case is fitted with a fixed tachymeter bezel with an olive green insert, and topped by a box-shaped sapphire crystal. The pushers have textured ends to resemble pedals in racing cars.

The earthy tones of the bezel continue on the dial which has a grained texture and beige color. The silver-coloured applied indices and hands are finished with Super-LumiNova inserts. Around the outer perimeter, there’s a sloped minute track in olive green to match the bezel. The central chrono hand has a long red tip, a 30-minute counter at 12 o’clock, a small seconds at 9 o’clock and 12-hour counter at 6 o’clock. There’s also a date window at 3 o’clock, flaked on the left by a tiny USA Mille Miglia which looks very clumsy. On the left side of the watch are a red and green stripe that pay homage to the Italian flag.

Inside is an unnamed automatic chronograph movement, but it’s almost certainly based on the Valjoux 7750. It beats at 28,800vph and has a power reserve of 48 hours, along with COSC-chronometer certification. The watch comes on a great strap that keeps it classy on the outside with perforated brown leather and has the cool-but-kinda-corny tire tread rubber on the inside.

The Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille is a highly limited edition with only 25 being made. Price is set at $9,300. See more on the Chopard website.

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The New Stowa Flieger Verus 36 Is A Desirably Small And Surprisingly Customisable Pilot’s Watch

Pforzheim’s official nickname is “Goldstatd”, or “Golden City”, for its history in jewellery and watch production. But I’m proposing a new one - mini Glashütte. It’s a tiny town that houses a disproportionately large number of watch manufacturers. Brands like Laco, Circula and Aristo were founded there and it’s currently the German headquarters for brands like Maurice Lacroix, Sector and Cimier. It’s a true powerhouse. Among the brands in Pforzheim is Stowa, a brand with an incredibly rich history that was family owned until the mid 90s. They were, of course, best known for being one of the five suppliers (with A. Lange, IWC, Laco, and Wempe) of B-Uhren to the German Luftwaffe during WWII. Not they make sports watches (no, really, go check out their Sports line, it’s pretty funky), chronographs and dressier options, but their bread and butter are still pretty much the classic pilot’s watches. Now Stowa is introducing something kind of unexpected - the Flieger Verus 36 a small pilot’s watch, one that measures just 36mm across.

Pilot’s watches, especially the German B-uhr which measured a massive 55mm in diameter, have always been known to take up a lot of wrist space in order to offer as much legibility while flying as possible. The Verus already comes in 40 and 42mm options, which are made even more unwieldily with long lugs. The Verus 36 measures an obvious 36mm wide, 11,3mm thick and has a lug-to-lug of 44,2mm. The stainless steel case gets a glass bead-blasted finish and an oversized onion crown on the right. On top is a sapphire crystal surrounded by a very thin bezel.

The shrinking of the watch didn’t affect the proportions of the dial. Sure, things are a bit more crowded with the white and lumed Arabic indices, but it all works out just fine. The hands are typical of a flieger and also filled with lume. But the final look of the dial is up to the customer, as Stowa offers a significant amount of customisation. I’m not just talking choosing a color for the dial - which you can’t do, the only color is matte black - but you can chose whether or not to have a logo displayed underneath the familiar triangle with two dots at 12 o’clock, and whether or not to have a date function which elegantly replaces the 6 o’clock numeral with a well blended in date disc. These are not modifications that are often found.

More customisation can be done on the inside. You have a choice of three movements which is pretty unheard of. Pick between the standard finish and top grade finish of the simple but reliable automatic Sellita SW 200 or, opt for a top version of the hand-wound Sellita SW 210. While you get a bit better accuracy with the top grade versions, you also get a much better finishing which would serve you well since there’s also a sapphire crystal on the caseback. The watch comes on a black leather strap that’s missing the characteristic rivets of pilot’s watches, but seeing as how they like choice, you can also opt for a Milanese mesh bracelet.

With all the customisation options, you would expect the pricing structure to be complicated, but it really isn’t. Wether you opt for the logo or the date doesn’t affect pricing, only your choice of movement does - €950 for the basic automatic, €1,080 for the top grade automatic and €1,100 for the hand wound version. See more on the Stowa website.

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Bangalore Watch Company Celebrates India’s Space Program With The New Meteorite Dial Apogee Karman Line

Quick, list of three Swiss watch companies. That was easy, right? Give me two German brands. One Japanese. They all pop to mind quite fast, right? Well, now, give me three Indian watch brands. I got you there, didn’t I? It’s a shame that a country with 1.4 billion people, and a thriving watch repair industry (that’s, to be fair, often maligned for it’s unwelcome interventions to pass off watches as something they are not), doesn’t have more watch brands that are top of mind outside of the country. There is one company that’s bucking this trend and that’s Bangalore Watch Company that has an impressive catalogue of great looking watches that often take inspiration from Indian military history. Their latest release, the Apogee Karman LIne, pays homage to being the first Indian watch in space.

To be fair, it’s one of those “ooh, we took our product to space, but we just flew it on a balloon really high”. I never did understand these marketing gimicks, but so many companies are doing it that it must be me just not getting it. I guess ti works for them. Anyway, BWC has been making the Apogee, a ceramic coated steel watch with an internal bezel, for a couple of years now, when they introduced it as an homage to the Indian Space Program and the first Indian satellite, Aryabhata. To mark their “space trip” they now released a meteorite dial version of the Apogee.

The Apogee Karman Line keeps the same case as the original Apogee, meaning you get a tonneau shape case that measures 40mm wide, 12mm thick and a very comfortable 44mm lug-to-lug thanks to the fact that the lugs are integrated into the case. The case is covered in ceramic in a process that BWC calls Cerasteel. Here, the watch is matte black, which seems kind of like a missed opportunity to match the blue or purple of the dial. Water resistance is 100 meters and there are double crowns on the right side of the watch, with the bottom one adjusting the time and the top one rotating the internal bezel.

Speaking of the dial, it really is a stunner. Made out of the Muonionalusta meteorite, it shines in shades of purple, blue and hints of green or teal. Surrounding the meteorite dial is the internal bezel which is also matte black with white markings for a 12/24-hour scale. The indices applied to the dial are rhodium plated, just like the hands, and all of them are treated with Super-LumiNova C3.

Inside, an update to the regular Apogee. While the regular model comes with the Sellita SW200, the Karman Line gets the La Joux-Perret G100. It has the same dimensions as the SW200, but it’s based on the Miyota 9015. You get 28,800vph, a very decent power reserve of 68 hours and accuracy is rated to -/+12 seconds per day. The watch comes on a black leather strap with a pin buckle.

The Bangalore Watch Co. Apogee Karman Line is limited to just 50 pieces and priced at $2,850. See more on the BWC website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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A review of the Christopher Ward Twelve X

2/

Hands on with the Hublot Big Bang Unico Dark Green Ceramic 42mm

3/

A review of the Grand Seiko White Birch SLGW003 in titanium and SLGW002 in 18k rose gold

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

Hemel might be your go-to watch for an affordable field watch with a colorful military bearing

Both dials feature a traditional field watch layout complete with a 24-hour index inside the primary hours. The handsets are the same as well, but that is where the watches stop sharing design elements and go off in their own directions. The most obvious difference is color: the Gallant is a deep blue with an orange triangle, while the Resolute is black. The branding will likely grab your eye as well, especially as the Gallant fills the lower section with the Air Force logo. Closer inspection reveals that the Gallant has bolder numbers than the Resolute, and its cardinal hours are larger than the rest.

Read the whole review on The Time Bum

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• It seems that the Olympics are desperate to get the attention of young people. Hence the inclusion of sports like skatebearding. But in this quest it can come off as that fantastic meme from 30 Rock in which a which a 50 year old Steve Buscemi is dressed in what he believes is cool-kids-clothes, carrying a skateboard and asking kids in high school: “How do you do, fellow kids”, thinking that he’s fooling someone. In such a move, the Olympics that start in a few months are including breakdancing as an official sport. That’s dangerously close to lame, but this piece from Rolling Stone about a dancer who's expected to win a medal is not bad.

• He was the world’s most famous child star. Then he had to figure out what came next. This is how Daniel Radcliffe managed to outrun Harry Potter.

• Have you watched Ripley on Netflix? It’s really, really good. Back when the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley came out, The New Yorker did a great writeup on Patricia Highsmith and why we love her novels.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Pearl Jam was on the Stern Show and my YouTube feed is full of their performances. The weekend is here, listen to some good music and have a good time.

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-Vuk