Good As Gold: The Tudor Black Bay 58 GMT
Thoughts on why the GMT is mechanical watchmaking at its best – and why Tudor’s becoming the complication’s flight leader.
This week at Watches & Wonders, there have been as usual a slew of talking pieces to talk about, and lots more than many people (including me) were anticipating. Cartier brought back the Tortue (Monopoussoir!); Vacheron, whom everyone thought was going to give us a steel 222, gave us the world’s most complicated watch instead; Piaget showed it was still a force to be reckoned with, with the Altiplano AUC tourbillon (another world record setter) and Bulgari took back the title for world’s thinnest watch. In among all of these was something unexpected from Tudor – a solid gold bracelet for the Tudor Black Bay 58 18k, which got a lot of press and a lot of comments for both the audacity of taking that much gold and using it to make a Tudor dive watch (for the record, my take was that the watch isn’t asking why, it’s asking WHY NOT, and there’s nothing wrong with that) and for the price.
However, the biggest news for Tudor fans looking for an entry true to Tudor’s identity as a maker of solid, no-nonsense tool watches that over deliver on practicality, was the introduction of the Black Bay 58 GMT.
This is of course not the first GMT watch from Tudor – the 2018 Black Bay GMT came first, at 41mm in diameter, and it was followed in 2022 by the 39mm Black Bay Pro. A certain percentage of Tudor fans, however, were holding out hope for a smaller and thinner Black Bay GMT (the 39mm Pro is 14.6mm thick) which, with the Black Bay 58 GMT, is exactly what they got.
The first Tudor dive watch to feature the Black Bay’s “snowflake” hands was the 1969 7016 Tudor Submariner and this was the handset that Tudor used when the Heritage Black Bay (as it was then called) was introduced in 2012. In 2018, the Black Bay 58 brought the case size down from 41mm to 39mm x 11.9mm. The first Black Bay GMT, meanwhile, came out in 2018, with a 41mm x 15mm case. And in 2021, Tudor launched the Black Bay Ceramic METAS – the first Tudor watch to carry certification from METAS, the Swiss Institute of Metrology. METAS certification is challenging – any watch so certified needs to be a COSC certified chronometer, as well as pass tests for precision in six positions, at two levels of power reserve (full wind, and 30 per cent) length of power reserve, and resistance of magnetic fields of up to, and at least, 15,00 gauss.
All of these things had to come together for the Black Bay 58 GMT to happen. It’s not quite as thin as a standard Black Bay 58, at 39mm x 12.8mm, but it is notably slimmer and smaller in diameter than the 2018 Black Bay GMT. And it is now the third Tudor watch to carry METAS certification, thanks to the caliber Tudor MT5450-U. And, last but definitely not least, there is the price – CHF 4100 on rubber, or CHF 4300 in steel.
This may be, right now, one of the best expression of a classic GMT complication in the world. The GMT complication is perhaps the most useful complication there is if you travel at all, and even if getting on board a modern jet makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck (now more than ever) it’s still a very satisfying complication to own, with its connections to the post-World War II boom in commercial aviation, and its general air of companionship in a life of adventure. METAS certification really sweetens the pot – accidentally magnetizing a watch so you actually notice the upset in accuracy is not exactly an everyday occurrence, but it’s more possible now than at any other time in human history and even if you don’t notice the effects of magnetic fields on your watch immediately, there can still be long-term repercussions for balance springs made of conventional, Nivarox type alloys. The size of the new Black Bay GMT makes it a bit more versatile than its predecessor (adjusted for expectations based on your wrist size and personal preferences, of course).
And then there is the price. A real hardcore dyed-in-the-wool watch enthusiast is probably not going to be deterred from taking an interest in a watch just because it’s “price on demand” any more than a true art lover is going to be deterred from taking an interest in, say, a Rothko just because it costs 186 million of your favorite dollars. However, if the watch industry’s to survive and thrive, there have to be watches that speak to more practical considerations as well. The Black Bay 58 GMT is, as a colleague of mine likes to put it, one of those watches which, unlike hype watches trading at three times MSRP (which was probably pretty high to begin with) or supercomplications, or ultra-refined hand-finished time-only watches from renowned independents (including the Big Three of independent horology) is going to actually matter in people’s lives.
And the watches that actually matter in people’s lives are the watches that are remembered, long after this or any year’s exotica are forgotten (except by incurable gearheads with painfully long memories). I’m looking forward to seeing one on my own wrist, but even more than that, I’m looking forward to seeing it on other people’s too.
The Tudor Black Bay 58 GMT: Case, steel, 29mm x 12.8mm, 20mm lug width; water resistance 200M. Movement, Master Chronometer/METAS certified Tudor MT5450-U, 30.3mm in diameter, with 65 hour power reserve, running in 34 jewels at 28,800 vph. Hours, minutes, center seconds, 24 hour GMT hand; “flyer” GMT with independently adjustable hour hand for local time; 24 hour bezel. Price, CHF 4100 (rubber strap) or CHF 4300 (steel bracelet with T-fit bracelet extension). Available April 2024. The 1916 Company is an Authorized Tudor Retailer.