Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Rodeo Drive Limited Edition: California Love
The mid-2000s were the heyday of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore limited editions. Of those legendary machines, the 42mm Royal Oak Offshore Rodeo Drive ranks among the rarest and most sought. Its gorgeous combination of stainless steel, gentle blue tones, silver sub-dials, and rare (for an Offshore) square-scale alligator leather is burned into the mind’s eye of countless avid Royal Oak and Offshore collectors.
Launched in 2005 in a series of 50 pieces to celebrate the opening of LA retail destination Westime’s Rodeo Drive boutique, the Royal Oak Offshore Rodeo Drive (Ref. 26060ST) is a celebration of color contrast, high-impact details, and a cohesive package that puts even full-gold Offshore LEs back on the shelf.
Westime’s signature blue and white colors inform the palette of the Rodeo Drive, and AP plays this theme like Stairway to Heaven. The soft blue of the strap finds an ideal complement in the white thread; each of the cobalt (almost navy) details of the dial receives a counterpoint in the form of robin’s egg blue Arabic numerals and hand lume. Sub-dials with rhodium-plated concentric guilloche texture explode and dance in harsh mid-day lighting and glow with a warm twinkle in the soft embrace of a Pacific coast sunset.
Audemars Piguet fits the Royal Oak Offshore Rodeo Drive Limited Edition with a caliber 2326/2840 automatic modular chronograph movement. It’s based on the refined Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber 889, but the 2326 version features mid-decade upgrades that JLC incorporated across its 889 range. Out goes inefficient bidirectional winding with steel ball bearings; in comes optimized unidirectional winding with sealed-for-life ceramic bearings. Out went the shock-susceptible mobile regulator; in comes a free-sprung balance with laser-welded hairspring (at the stud AND collet).
See this rare, beautiful, and highly collectible Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Rodeo Drive Limited Edition in high-resolution images on www.watchuwant.com.