Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You welcome to a matter of Time, a podcast by Tag Hoyer. I'm your host, Nicholas Bebeck, heritage director at Tagoyer, and I'm pleased to be here with you today live from watches and Wonders in Geneva.
[00:00:16] It's the 27 March. We've just announced our new novelties, and I'm really pleased to have a number of them in front of me to talk you through the stories today.
[00:00:24] You it. As you know, in this season, we've been covering the 60 years of Carrera up until this moment. And as we enter the 7th decade, we decided to reimagine what the Carrera meant to consumers. When we look back, we have the amazing history of the name coming from the Carrera Pan Americana, the distinctive design codes that were laid down in the 1960s, revolutionary technologies such as the Automatic Chronograph launched in 1969. And all of these codes have been distilled down into this new collection that we're presenting today. So I'm going to share with you three individual references. They're super, super exciting. So we have two new 39 millimeter cases, and the amazing thing is this case format. It's been fantastic for Tag Hoyer as a brand over the past few years. We introduced this glass box design in 2015 with the telometer scale for Jack Hoyer's birthday piece, and we've used it in a number of limited editions ever since, including the birthday Carrera that was announced in January. For this year's release, we have two different takes on this new 39 millimeter case. But before I talk about the dial differences, I really want to talk about the overall design and construction of the case, because it's really revolutionary for us and for the wider watch industry.
[00:01:31] So what we've done with the Carrera for this year is we've pushed the crystal all the way to the edge of the case, and it creates this fantastic magnifying effect on the dial. 39 mm is a perfect diameter for such a wide range of wrist sizes. So we have the fantastic ergonomics with a slightly shorter lug to wrap it closer to the wrist, and these wonderful new straps that we've conceived for these watches. But what's really revolutionary is the crystal. It goes all the way right to the very edge of the case, and it gives the watch a much larger impression on the wrist than its physical dimensions would lead you to believe. It creates fantastic visual impact and continues to reinforce the Carrera and its incredible DNA through design languages. Talking of the dials, we have two variations, one which takes a lot of its codes from our amazing DNA, particularly this fantastic reverse panda that was introduced around 1968. With that, we've got silvered sub dials and a black dial base, plus the date window at 12:00 and this slightly aged loom to give it this more heritage sensation.
[00:02:29] In the more contemporary sphere, we have this fantastic blue finished dial with this bright radial brush finishing, which, when it catches the light, it's so dramatic and animated. There's no contrast to the sub dials. It's maintained blue throughout, so it's a slightly more subtle feeling. It has this wonderful wrist presence and really feels very, very contemporary, whilst maintaining all of the 60 years of the legacy of the Carrera.
[00:02:52] Inside these watches, we have a new iteration of our fantastic Hoya Two movement, which we'll now be calling the TH 20. With it, we've changed the way that the automatic winding operates, so it's now bi directional, improving the efficiency of the movement. We've also changed the finishing to bring it more in line with our global family of movement, including the TH 30 that we launched last year and was fitted into our superdiver models, and the TH 50, which is inside our solar graph collection.
[00:03:18] So now that we've covered the 239 millimeter models, we've also got this amazing new version of our Torbillon Carrera. It's the first time we've housed the Tourbillon complication in a more classically inspired case. It's been shrunken to 42 mm, so it's wearable by an even wider range audience than our original 44 millimeter execution. We've carried over some of the codes from the blue 39 millimeter onto the dial, but added these fantastic orange accents to really highlight things like the chronograph hand and the markers around the edge of the dial. The construction is particularly interesting because, of course, the Tourbillon cage takes up a lot of the dial space and it's actually created this little step into the rail around the outside of the movement. And it really draws attention to this fantastic escapement device that we've integrated into our watches.
[00:04:04] Again, it's an upgraded version of our previous Hoya Two, now known as the TH 20, and in this execution, it's called the TH 29.
[00:04:13] We've carried over the new winding features, as we've done on the 39 millimeter models, and also integrated the new finishing ideas. It's interesting for me the way that this new crystal design really magnifies the Tourbillon within the case and really highlights this fantastic device that we've included within the watch. So really a great addition to the Carrera collection as we enter its 7th decade.
[00:04:36] Thank you very much for being here with me today at watches and Wonders. It's a pleasure really, to present these new novelties live on the first day of the fair, and I hope everyone gets a chance to see with them and play with them in the near future.
[00:04:50] Thank you very much for listening to a matter of time. Looking forward to welcoming you on our next episode.
