Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore 25770BA D-Series: Origin of the Species
Audemars Piguet is a big believer in evolution; the family-managed firm has mastered survival of the fittest the hard way.
Evolution is the long arc that traces the development of a species through adversity and toward perfection. And for luxury watchmakers like Audemars Piguet times don’t come any more adverse than the recession years of the early 1990s. Even worse, Audemars Piguet‘s clientele circa 1989 could have passed for groupies at a “Matlock” fan fest.
While age is to be revered, even a 110 year-old Swiss institution like Audemars Piguet understood that its next century of survival depended on diversifying the customer demographics.Younger enthusiasts were needed, and the resurgent market for Rolex proved that such buyers existed; the question at hand was how to reach them. AP decided to go straight to the source.
22 year-old industrial designer Emmanuel Gueit joined AP straight out art school. As the 1992 20th anniversary of the original Royal Oak approached, Gueit received the go-ahead quietly pursue a youth-oriented update of the Gerald Genta original. The rest of Offshore‘s evolutionary arc – from its rocky market reception to its eventual rise to stardom and adoption by the power elite – is fodder for historians.
Today, this D-Series Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore 25770BA offers an exquisite throwback to the Precambrian days of the early 1990s. Throw this thing on the wrist, and you’re flat out in a 1994 Acura NSX, riding shotgun with Winston Wolfe, en route to save Vincent and Jules from The Bonnie Situation. Maybe it’s GnR on the stereo, maybe it’s Nirvana, but the point is that this Offshore is a serious time capsule from the dawn of the ROO era.
One glance assures even the most casual watch-literate onlooker that this is an Offshore, but the details reveal how much has changed since the early Grunge era.
Consider the dial. This one sports the original blue tapisserie of the first Basel ’93 show watches. In an effort to establish the pedigree of its frankly outrageous monster watch, AP dictated that the first Royal Oak Offshores be tied more directly to their illustrious predecessor. The waffle-iron guilloché of the dial is fine, intricate, and more visibly related to the Royal Oak than the chunky grid featured on Offshores of the last fifteen years.
Beyond the tapisserie‘s delicate cut, Gueit’s original indexes, affectionately dubbed “blob indexes” by Offshore devotees, leave the dial more open and expansive than latter references with Arabic numerals. Many connoisseurs of the Royal Oak Offshore series maintain that the original dial of the 25770 models remains the model’s all-time high water mark for legibility and elegance.
Additional refinement comes in the form of delicate 18-karat chapter rings around the sub-dials and a contrasting brushed rehaut with white-printed tachymeter scale.
Audemars Piguet broke new ground with 1972 Royal Oak, which featured the unheard-of combination of a stainless steel case with haut-de-gamme finish and a $3,000 price tag, but the Le Brassus icon had taken a conservative tack since that ground-breaking debut. The Royal Oak Offshore wrote the firm’s next chapter in aesthetic audacity.
Gueit started with the basic case elements of the Royal Oak: a raised octagonal bezel; inset bezel bolts (steel for the Offshore); integrated full-width lugs, and extremely complex alternating finish. To this foundation, Gueit added three dimensions and exaggerated details.
Royal Oak‘s sealing gasket between the case and bezel became an external feature in itself, fully expressed as an artistic element. The once 39mm case became a nominal 42mm, but it wore much larger thanks to vastly greater thickness and mass. Gueit’s Offshore was designed from the outset to accommodate both a strap and a bracelet. Genta’s original was designed with only an integrated bracelet in mind.
This early Ref. 25770BA features AP’s leather strap option and the unique center-link lugs that accompany the strap and cannot interchange with a bracelet.
While the Royal Oak was designed as a time-only watch with date, the Offshore was planned from inception as a sports chronograph.
Finally, the new model was endowed with a crown and chronograph pushers crafted from hydrogenated nitrile rubber, a synthetic compound with a high degree of resistance to abrasion, skin oils, and high temperatures. To traditionalists and AP’s old-guard, the inclusion of full synthetic compounds (even MDM’s Hublot used natural rubber) was the final affront that should have buried the concept.
Fortunately, history proved the curmudgeons wrong, and this Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore 25770BA stands as a the first (yellow) brick in a long road and a journey that continues to this day. On that note, it’s worth mentioning that of the many knock-offs and wannabees inspired by the original Offshore, few have cared to emulate the delicate finish and top-shelf attention to detail that reminds collectors that every Offshore is an Audemars Piguet first and foremost.
And that’s what distinguishes the ROO among oversized sports watches.
While its size has been overtaken and surpassed, the watch was never about size alone. Audemars Piguet’s heritage places it among the ranks of Vacheron Constantin, Patek Philippe, and Jaeger-LeCoultre as one of the elite of Swiss horology. The products of Le Brassus feature immaculate movement finishing, exceedingly complex case finishing, and dials crafted on Charles Darwin-era engraving technology.
Within its mass of gold, rubber, and leather, the Ref. 25770BA retains an old-school heart: JLC’s caliber 889. One of the greatest movements of all time, the 889 has powered generations of top-shelf timepieces from the hallowed halls of leading watchmakers. In this case, it does business as the Audemars Piguet Cal. 2126/2840, the second number reflecting AP’s designation for the vertical-clutch Dubois Depraz chronograph module.
While no Offshores featured a display caseback until 2004 (the Juan Pablo Montoya), every Ref. 25770 incorporates the exceptional finish that earned AP is ranking among the “Holy Trinity” of Switzerland. Each plate, bridge, and lever features a hand-drawn and polished edge. Every expanse of visible base plate (and many unseen surfaces) is relieved of fabrication scars with tight overlapping rings of perlage. Straight-grained and circular dressage complete the finishing of wheels and levers.
The Royal Oak Offshore is a beast on the outside, but even this ancestral 25770 bears the mark of highly-evolved craft excellence within its brontosaurus-like bones.
Remove the gold caseback, and a charming vestige of the early Royal Oak Offshores presents itself.
Due to the immense case volume of the Offshore, AP decided to augment its sports watch credentials by fitting an anti-magnetic soft iron case. As with the Rolex Milgauss, the “Faraday Cage” helps to channel flux from electronic appliances (especially speakers) around the vulnerable movement. This feature is exclusive to the original JLC-powered Royal Oak Offshore; AP’s in-house 3126 is too thick to fit within an inner iron case and enjoys no shielding.
2014 witnessed the debut of a new generation of Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshores. But as the glitter and glamour of the 2014 model year fades, the giants of history stand taller than ever. Like Godzilla, the 25770BA is a monster from a bygone age.
It may not be the new kid on the block, but its teeth are still sharp enough to “cut a rut” from Miami Beach to Tokyo.