Tudor Monte Carlo

If you walk into a Tudor authorized dealer today, you’re going to see something eerily similar this watch. Tudor has found great success in the last five years by offering a Heritage line of vintage reboots, and their most popular chronograph is modeled after this beauty, the 7169. The Heritage Chronograph is a great watch, but nothing can beat the real thing.

We don’t bullshit our clients by calling every watch our favorite watch, but in this case, we can sincerely say that the blue Monte Carlos are truly one of our favorites, and it’s easy to see why. With it’s Oyster case, unique gray dial with metallic blue sub-registers and orange accents, any collector can recognize the heavy Rolex influence and funky 70s vibe a mile away. At the time when Rolex was only producing 36mm Daytonas, Tudor was given the task of pushing the design envelope for the company, taking the risks that Rolex would not. Put this watch next to a Newman and the Rolex looks downright sedate.

Powered by a manually wound Valjoux 234 movement, the Tudor differs from the Daytona a bit in terms of functionality. The Monte Carlo replaces the Daytona’s hours chronograph sub-register for a date, and counts up to 45 minutes.   The cyclops date magnifier is a Rolex/Tudor trademark touch, but these Tudor chronos are the only instance of it found at 6 o’clock, and if you look closely, you’ll see that the crystal is not a standard “Top Hat” spun around, but the magnifier itself is rotated 90 degrees to a horizontal orientation over the date. Even if you’ve never been much of a cyclops fan, on this watch it just works!

The Monte Carlo is a fantastic addition to any collections on its own merits, but compared with it’s Rolex Oyster Chronograph cousin, it’s a downright bargain. At a third the price of a no-frills Big Red Daytona, it’s hard to resist the Monte Carlo given its identical build quality and off-beat design.

We at analog/shift are huge vintage Tudor fans, and often find ourselves preferring the Tudor version of a watch compared to the Rolex. It seems like everyone and their mother is wearing a vintage Rollie these days, so a Tudor is a great way to enjoy everything that made the brand the icon it is, while managing to stick out from the crowd.