The Monaco Titan Special Edition is based on the traditional Calibre 11 Monaco case, but with a twist: for the first time, the classic Monaco case is made from titanium.
Yes, there has been a titanium Monaco in the past, but this was the high-end Monaco V4. Apart from the Bamford Carbon edition in 2018, the classic Monaco has been made only from steel since 1998.
The blue Monaco Calibre 11 has been in the range since 2015, with TAG Heuer supplementing this watch with a series of limited edition Calibre 11s over the years.
Case
Although the case design is faithful to the 1998 Monaco redesign, the 39mm case is made of grade 2 titanium-grade 2 means it is pure titanium, unlike grade 5 titanium, which is an alloy of titanium and aluminum. The main advantage of titanium is corrosion resistance, and more importantly in the field of watchmaking is its light weight.
Interestingly, TAG Heuer decided to sandblast the case, which makes the watch completely different from the standard model.
Dial
The dial is very special-the sunburst silver dial, dotted with two recessed black registers. The color scheme extends to the white sub-dial hands and the black details on the dial-the outer minute track, date window, and the bottom and tips of the hour and minute hands.
It is precisely because of this basically monochromatic appearance that two red splashes can have such a strong effect-the red central chronograph hand and the red flash at 12 o’clock.
Caseback
Today’s Calibre 11 is a modular chronograph movement, using the Sellita SW300 basic movement combined with the Dubois Dépraz 2006 chronograph module.
This watch uses the common Monaco round sapphire crystal glass. The difference this time is that the polished surface of the Calibre 11 movement contrasts sharply with the matte surface of the sandblasted back cover.
The red “Heuer” logo is eye-catching, and the silver-red color scheme is consistent with the color of the dial.
