Anyone who knows the history of the Fake TAG Heuer brand knows that the company has pushed borders many times. As a reminder, a few examples from the last dozen or so years: in 2004, the storm at Baselworld was caused by the revolutionary concept of the Monaco V4 watch, in which transmission belts appeared instead of traditional shafts and gears, and the flywheel was replaced by a special structure placed on bearings. As surprising as the V4 were: the concept model, i.e. the Pendulum Concept with the first watch movement without a hairspring, as well as the Carrera Mikrograph 1 / 100th Second Chronograph, created for the company’s 150th anniversary, measuring time with an accuracy of 1/100 s and the Flying Mikrotimer 1000 Concept Chronograph, the measurement of which was even more accurate (up to 1/1000 s). Further on, in 2015 a lot of controversy (due to the competitive price) was raised by the premiere of the Carrera Heuer 02T with a tourbillon, which four years later (as the Carrera Caliber Heuer 02T Tourbillon Nanograph) surprised with an ultra-modern hairspring made of carbon composite.
So it can be said that the creation of extravagant models is a matter of honor for the TAG Heuer brand. And events like Replica Watches & Wonders are the perfect opportunity to show off something everyone will talk about. Because the so-called a complication or material that no one has used before is a great bait to talk about and write about a brand.
At W&W, a real publicity at TAG Heuer made the Carrera Plasma Tourbillon made of aluminum, ceramics and synthetic diamonds. This time the discussions did not concern the tourbillon and its price, but the materials used, namely diamonds. With their appearance, composition and physical properties, artificial diamonds resemble the natural ones (you cannot see the difference even under a magnifying glass), so they are an ideal material for experiments such as the Carrera Plasma Tourbillon model.
While laboratory diamonds are nothing new, they made their first appearance in a luxury watch. There are a lot of them in this model (in total they weigh as much as 11.7 kr): starting with a large crown, which is entirely made of diamond (2.5 kr), to 48 diamonds (4.2 kr), which look like they were accidentally “embedded” in an envelope (this way of setting stones would not be possible with natural diamonds), and ending up with a diamond-coated dial (3.9 kr) and decorated with white gold and diamond indexes (0.4 kr).
The case of the Carrera Plasma Tourbillon model has a diameter of 44 mm and is made of sandblasted and anodized aluminum in black (black creates a great contrast to the cool white of the diamonds). The caseback is also made of aluminum (sandblasted and anodized), fastened with four titanium screws. On the other hand, the buttons used to operate the stopwatch are made of steel covered with a black ADLC coating. Another material used here is scratch-resistant black ceramics. A ring was made of it, with a tachymeter scale engraved on it
Moving on, let’s take a look at the dial. As I mentioned, the dial is fully covered with a polycrystalline, diamond coating, but the two shades of this coating are interesting. The main dial is bright and the two stopwatch counters below (30 minutes at 3 o’clock and 12 hours at 9 o’clock) are marked in black. The polished hands: hour and minute, which are covered with black, matte varnish and white luminous mass, are kept in the same tone.
On the dial, at 6, you can also see the tourbillon cage, which proves that the automatic Heuer 02 Tourbillon Nanograph caliber with a 65-hour power reserve, known from the Carrera Caliber Heuer 02T Tourbillon Nanograph model shown in 2019, is responsible for all indications. The caliber Heuer 02 T was created in our own manufacture, it has, among others, hair made of carbon composite and is one of the most accurate tourbillon movements (the accuracy of the gait is confirmed by a chronometer certificate issued by COSC). The balance works in it at a frequency of 4 Hz (28,800 A / h).
The Carrera Plasma Tourbillon comes with a black calf leather strap and is finished with a titanium spindle clasp. The watch does not come from a limited series, but according to TAG Heuer, the company plans to produce a few, maybe a dozen or so pieces. Price: CHF 342,000 (~ PLN 1,550,000).