Issue 146: Tudor FXD GMT Review
The Pelagos travel-timer under the loupe, plus some thoughts on Tudor as a brand
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that - as is customary following a more controversial issue - would like to welcome all its new subscribers! I can’t be that spicy every week but I promise it’s always waiting in the wings. A huge thank you, as well, to everyone who messaged on here, on Instagram and on email to express their support. I did hesitate before giving my unfiltered take on Nico vs Bremont, but I’m glad it’s out there now. I hate to disappoint anyone looking for the next online feud, but there is no immediate follow-up, either. Of course there has been contact between the two of us - I expected nothing less - but there really isn’t anything more to add now. On we go, and this week I have my hands-on review of the Tudor Pelagos FXD GMT, as well as a few brief thoughts on some recent launches. Enjoy!
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Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
Watches & Wonders 2025
A little housekeeping note
I’ll be in Switzerland for Watches & Wonders (say hi if you see me, please!) from March 31st to April 4th and during that time, if I’m awake, I’ll be running from one meeting to the next. I’m catching up with over 50 brands in less than four days, which still leaves plenty I wish I had more time to stay and see. What that doesn’t leave any time for is the writing of a newsletter - certainly not my usual 3,000 words of finely-crafted1 prose.
But don’t worry. I wouldn’t dream of doing nothing. During the week I’ll use The Fourth Wheel Instagram for immediate reactions to new watches - you may even find me making videos - and my current plan is to put out a newsletter on Saturday 5th with my first-take summary of What It All Means. It’s the first newsletter of the month so it will be free to all: what that also means is that I will save some of the juiciest gossip and more in-depth analysis for paying subscribers the following week.
You’ll still get a newsletter next Friday as usual, and as I’m about to touch on, some big stories are already breaking. I just thought I’d give you a heads-up (and a reminder to follow on social media!)
In Brief: Louis Vuitton x Voutilainen, Ressence and more…
Some brands are already showing us the good stuff
This week has brought some really interesting watches. We are approaching peak time for ‘having opinions on watches you haven’t seen or handled’, so with that in mind I’m keeping this as brief as I can.
The Louis Vuitton x Voutilainen GMR-6: this looks fantastic, is a really interesting project and costs an absolute fortune - CHF 550,000! I hope to see it up close soon, I really do. The decoration on both the dial and the movement is absolutely fantastic. I still find the ‘Louis Cruises with…’ designation utterly cringeworthy and despite the obvious parallels, think this series has some way to go before it reaches the status of Harry Winston’s Opus watches.
There are three more indie collaborations lined up, apparently: I expect they will be with the best of the best, but who exactly? I doubt Dufour will do it, or Journe… I think De Bethune would be interesting - a Tambour in the floating lugs case could be cool. Urwerk as well maybe - the satellite hours could easily merge with the spin-time complication. Maybe too obvious. Vianney Halter could be cool; Greubel Forsey likewise, but I don’t think either is too likely. One that really could work would be Konstantin Chaykin; I think he has the right level of out-of-the-box thinking and whimsy. What do you think?
Ressence’s Type 7 debuted, introducing a GMT complication and an integrated bracelet design. I have to see this before I judge, because on pictures alone I can’t tell if it has that level of comfort and sleek futurism that all Ressence’s do. But I am thrilled to see Benoit adding complications. What might Type 4 and Type 6 have in store…?
Jean-Marc Pontroué announced he was leaving Panerai via LinkedIn and Instagram. That is not the carefully coordinated PR strategy a group like Richemont would be looking for, a week before Watches & Wonders. Emmanuel Perrin is stepping in (note how quickly they have filled that CEO vacancy, unlike the wait at Vacheron and JLC last year, and the ongoing vacancy at Roger Dubuis, where Perrin has been ‘interim’ CEO for almost two years) and it is reported that Richemont’s watchmaking division is being dissolved. All of this feels rushed to me, and Pontroué’s DIY messaging also isn’t how you’d expect things to go if he’d left entirely of his own accord. I know nothing, of course, except that Richemont enters a closed period on April 1st prior to the publication of its annual report on May 16th, so clearly had to get this news out of the way before then. And it would make no sense for Pontroué to go through with W&W if he’s about to get the axe. I wonder how much of what Panerai had planned to show will still be launched; in times like these, if someone’s pulling a handbrake turn, it’s worth paying extra close attention.
THE TFW TDR PLGS FXD GMT RVW
Where we’re going, we don’t need vowels
Review a Tudor. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? I put a message out about a month ago on the Substack chat asking people for suggestions and among the requests for reviews of rare, expensive and hard-to-borrow watches (many of which I am working on - it just takes a little time) this was the one idea that stood out as both immediately doable, creatively satisfying and perhaps even practical in its utility to you, the reader. Here is a recently released watch (it came out in November 2024) that I suspect a lot of you have considered buying. It’s highly likely a few of you already own one2. What a perfect subject for a review.
There’s just one problem. It’s a very tricky subject for a review.
Allow me to explain. The ideal review subject - in any field, I think - is something moderately complex. It can be great or dreadful - either extreme calls for a particular approach and both are great fun to write - but it’s actually best if it’s between the two. As a very general rule, the simpler the item, the harder it is to criticise at length.
Now, this is getting dangerously close to a journalistic cliché that you may recognise; the writerly equivalent of saying “Oh, my only flaw is that I’m a real perfectionist” in a job interview. “The only problem is that there are no problems!” is the kind of thing you’ll find in a lot of luxury lifestyle publications, eager to please the brand being reviewed but also hoping to present an illusion of journalistic rigour to the reader. The Tudor FXD GMT is not perfect, but as a review subject I found it somewhat implacable. Impenetrable, almost. I sized it up from every angle, looking for the detail, the impression, the idiosyncrasy into which I could insert my critical crowbar and pry it open, and it was like trying to climb a sheet of glass.
You might be surprised that I’m saying this; the FXD GMT isn’t the simplest possible watch, and any watch by its very nature has a degree of complexity built in (compared to, say, a plain white T-shirt or a sandwich or a knife, and people manage to review them just fine). I am simply reporting my experience, which was that the FXD GMT really tested me when it came to producing an elaborate and lengthy analysis. It’s a watch that reflexively prompts a one-word summary. “What’s it like?” people asked me. “It’s good,” I said. They would nod, because they would agree: this is a good watch.
That does not make for much of a review, does it? If you stop here (please don’t…!) and rush out to buy one, you will not have made a mistake.
But I will rise to the challenge and tell you more - I could hardly tell you less, after all.
On first impressions, the FXD GMT epitomises that metaphorical sense of impenetrability. The monobloc case is uniform, matte and sparsely adorned. There’s a neat bevel to the outer edge of the lugs, and when you turn the watch over the underside of each lug corner is chamfered off in a very particular way - just a millimetre or two of irregular trapezoid. Given the way the strap runs through, I struggled to see how this made a difference to its wearability, and it’s almost unnoticeable, but there must be a reason. If there’s one thing about this watch, it’s the impression that nothing is there without a reason.
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