Today, recently appointed General Manager of TAG Heuer, Guy Semon dropped a bombshell on the Revolution team with news of an upcoming watch that certainly is a provocative statement of intent.

We at Revolution love our watches, and the passing parade of the best that the Swiss watch industry has to offer is by no means something we don’t enjoy, yet it is for certain moments we live for, when we are stunned by the combination of features that come together in a special watch. So what more can I do to express how we felt by saying that our jaws dropped when Guy Semon told us about the upcoming Calibre Heuer 02 Tourbillon Chronograph.

Indeed, the collective excitement of the people in the room, including Revolution Founder Wei Koh, went to fever pitch when all was laid bare. The headline to this article basically says it all: this fabulous watch coming soon from TAG Heuer, is a COSC Certified Flying Tourbillon Chronograph For Under 20,000CHF. But wait, just how much under 20,000CHF? How does 14,900 CHF sound? Much better? We know. We can’t believe it ourselves.

So what do you get for your money? The “TAG Heuer Calibre Heuer 02 Tourbillon Chronograph” as it will officially be called comes in a 45mm Grade 5 Titanium case and mounted on a black rubber strap. The black skeleton dial comes with two chronograph counters, with the sub-dial at 3 o’clock for minutes, and 9 o’clock for hours.

The movement within is based on the CH80, a column wheel (vertical clutch) equipped automatic chronograph that was announced last year, but this time with the undoubted raison d’être of the show, a flying tourbillon.

Take a look at the picture above and you’ll see that the tourbillon cage is composed of carbon and steel, allowing a combination of lightness for efficiency (carbon) and weight for inertia and rate stability (steel).

Certainly, the upcoming introduction of this watch will prove TAG Heuer’s savoir-faire in movement manufacturing, especially as it concerns the ability to industrialise production of the emotionally vibrant and very popular tourbillon complication.  

The tourbillon itself completes a rotation every minute and runs at 4 Hz. Unlike the stock CH80 that this movement is based on, the power reserve here is 64 hours instead of 80 hours.

Excuse the low quality of the pictures in this post, for while some members of the press have been informed about this upcoming release, no one has been given official pictures yet nor have been allowed to release the news. In a gesture of overwhelming generosity however, Guy Semon surprised us by giving us the exclusive right to announce this to the rest of the world, and allowed us to photographed the super-secret and confidential drafts that you see in this post.

So there you have it. Fantastic news, and this will be one that will get many people excited and possibly shake up the market this year. We’ll have a closer look at this watch when it comes out and deliver a full report on it, till then however, I’d suggest you start saving up for one of the most accessibly priced tourbillon watches in the market coming to a store near you in the future.

(Update: I’ve been told by TAG Heuer that the Calibre Heuer 02 Tourbillon Chronograph, although based on the CH80, will not have a column wheel in its chronograph mechanism. More details to come when available to us.)