Watches and cars go together like peanut butter and jelly, wine and cheese, or Ren and Stimpy. Not that they’re intrinsically linked, or that you’d need one to operate the other. But they work together beautifully — accurate chronographs help to mark those lap times, right? While racing has gone electronic for timing, there’s something to be said about the mechanical nature of a watch paired with the raw mechanical nature of a car. To that end, there’s a new watch that you can only get if you buy a car: the Aston Martin DBS Superleggera TAG Heuer Edition.
Well, actually, that’s the car you’re buying (at £295,000). With it, you get, along with your floor mats and undercoating, a TAG Heuer DBS Edition Carrera Heuer 02. I’m no expert on cars, but this is a lovely piece of machinery. I actually saw another Aston Martin just yesterday, actually, at the mall, and this is a car with sheet metal that makes it look like it’s going fast, even when it’s standing still. For all that, the grille opening calls to mind (or at least my mind) that of a fish opening its mouth to swallow a bug. Perhaps not a glamorous association, but it still works, right? I mean, the grille opening is gulping in air for the engine. Now, if it were a shooting brake, then we could have the fly rods hanging up in the back…
I digress. Grille oddities aside, the Aston Martin DBS Superleggera TAG Heuer Edition is a lovely piece of metal, and only 50 of them will be made. Should you see one on the street, you can rest assured that the driver will be sporting a TAG Heuer DBS Edition Carrera Heuer 02 (also limited to 50 pieces, as the watch comes with the car). To tie things into the car, that honeycomb look of the grille is replicated in the dial with an openwork lattice. That, along with the Aston Martin logo at 6 o’clock and the words “Aston Martin” on the tachymeter scale are the main cues up front. Around back you’ve got more verbiage cementing things.
From the photos (no spec sheet was provided here, unfortunately), it looks like the TAG Heuer DBS Edition Carrera Heuer 02 features a forged carbon case, which should keep things nice and light (need to reduce the weight on the car for speed, you know). For Heuer, the association to motorsports is not a difficult one to make, and I do like how the brand has tried to pick up cues from the car (the grille and the coloration on the watch) rather than just slapping an Aston Martin logo on an otherwise stock piece and calling it a day. It’s also interesting to see the TAG Heuer logo popping up in the car (something we don’t normally see outside sponsored race cars). It’s an interesting collaboration that’s off to a strong start. We’ll be watching from the terraces to see how things progress once they’ve got a few more laps under their shared belt. Learn more about the partnership at tagheuer.com
