Once again, TAG Heuer has released a new Monaco chronograph to celebrate the running of the Monaco Grand Prix, which took place over the weekend in, you guessed it, Monaco. While it’s surely a bit on-the-nose to unveil a new chronograph that is named after the race itself on race weekend, we’ll forgive TAG here given the simple fact that the Monaco Grand Prix’s place in our culture. If it’s not one of the most watched races in the world, it’s certainly one of the most recognizable and well known. The word “Monaco” to many will immediately conjure images of the race, unless it’s heard by a watch collector, in which case iconic square cased chrono is likely to be front of mind. In any event, not introducing a new Monaco on race weekend would likely amount to a tactical error on TAG Heuer’s part, given the intense focus on F1 over the weekend.
The new watch is effectively a new variant of the watch released last year, which introduced skeleton dials to the Monaco collection with brightly colored accents and lightweight titanium cases. Here we have a DLC coated titanium case measuring 39mm across and 15.2mm tall, with a skeletonized dial featuring dark blue and bright yellow accents. Skeleton dials can, of course, sometimes be a bit difficult to read, but time-telling on the skeletonized Monaco is fairly straightforward with sharp white minute markers at the perimeter of the blue minute ring, and oversized lume filled hour markers set against the Caliber 02 underneath it. The Caliber 02 that powers the Monaco is a rock solid, modern mechanical chronograph movement, with an 80 hour power reserve, column wheel, and vertical clutch.
It’s kind of impossible not to think about this watch in the context of the other big Monaco release so far this year. The $100,000+ Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph that was revealed at Watches & Wonders is obviously a wildly different watch than what we see here in many ways, but they also share an aesthetic that is driven by the movement, and both have an unflinchingly contemporary vibe about them. That’s interesting for the Monaco collection writ large, I think. To me, this collection in particular has always felt like a very specific kind of throwback – a design from a previous generation that imagined what a new era might look and feel like. It makes sense, then, that many of the Monaco’s we’ve seen introduced in recent years would seem to be this generation’s equivalent, with bold designs, skeletonized dials, hyper-advanced movements, and tons of lume.
The newest iteration of the Monaco carries a retail price of $11,250 and is available right now through authorized TAG Heuer channels. It is not a limited edition. TAG Heuer
