Roger Dubuis Excalibur Chronoexcel: Big and Bronzed for Summer

Why choose between “going big” and “going home” when you can do both? In the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Chronoexcel, the experiments Geneva watchmaker “goes big” and hits a “home-run.”

Big, fine, and built in-house to standards that would impress the patrician elders of Geneva horology, this Roger Dubuis Excalibur Chronoexcel is a bold hybrid of ancient finishing techniques and 21st-century style.

Let’s be clear: this 45mm stainless steel monster machine isn’t for everyone, but, in the worlds of Dubuis’ own leadership, this watch is “Just for Friends” who follow the watchmaker’s avant-garde thinking. In the world of Roger Dubuis, watches like the Excalibur Chronoexcel prove that quality and quantity are a match made in horological heaven.

A color palette of bronze, silver, red, and black is unabashedly sporting in appearance. The vast bronze rehaut, sunburst metallic dial, red chronograph hands, and six (!) polished lug junctions declare Roger Dubuis’ intent to create a thinking man’s Hublot. While traditionalists might protest, “less is more,” Dubuis responds by proving that MORE is more.

No expense has been spared to ensure that the bewildering array of metallic finish, gloss painted Roman numerals, accents of scarlet, dial guilloche work, and diamond-polished applied white gold Dauphine hands read with the same clarity and quality that one would expect to find on a Geneva Seal Vacheron Constantin, L.U. Chopard, or neighboring independent manufacture F.P. Journe.

Thanks to a supremely comfortable alligator leather strap make the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Chronoexcel is an agreeable companion. Despite its size, thoughtful sculpting of the lugs, case back, and rubber strap ensure that wrists as small as 6″ in circumference can accompany this timepiece in total comfort. Roger Dubuis’ style may polarize, but the ergonomics of the Excalibur Chronoexcel are beyond reproach.

As a true manufacture of in-house movements, Roger Dubuis fits its leviathan sports chronograph with an automatic RD78 caliber stamped with the vaunted Poincon de Geneve mark of excellence. The micro-rotor movement measures only 5.8mm thick despite over 300 pieces, 36, jewels, automatic winding, and a traditional column wheel chronograph mechanism.

All facets of the bridges, levers, wheels, and baseplate reflect the investment of vast human attention, energy, and skill. Mirror-grade “black” polish, circular metallic graining of the wheels, cotes de Geneve ridges, and a single cobalt kiln-oxidized screw (atop the capped column wheel) prove that Roger Dubuis has produced more than a sports watch with a pedigree; the Excalibur Chronoexcel is a modern watch with traditional soul.

With the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Chronoexcel, Swiss high horology has taken the next logical step in the journey started by the 1993 Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore. A truly top-shelf craft master piece that happens to be a sports watch, the Excalibur Chronoexcel is the real-world embodiment of the qualities that Hublot *attempts* to project. Roger Dubuis hits the ball out of the park and proves that it is, in fact, possible to “go big” and “go home” at the same time.

Video and content by Tim Mosso.