Tudor Pelagos FXD Alinghi Red Bull Racing Edition

Tudor is an interesting brand with a rich history. Hans Wilsdorf – founder of Rolex, was a brilliant strategist with a very good and clear vision for the future, and this is confirmed by his following words: “For some years now, I have been considering the idea of making a watch that our agents could sell at a more modest price than our Rolex watches. Yet it would have to be a watch that would attain the same standard of dependability for which Rolex is famous. I decided to form a separate company, with the object of making and marketing this new watch. It is called the Tudor Watch Company.” Having created Rolex in the first decade of the 20th century and by that time already a leading figure in the world of luxury Swiss watches, he made this announcement on March 6th, 1946. It marked the birth of the Tudor brand and of its production and communication strategy. Hans Wilsdorf's intuition was as simple as it was ingenious. At that time, the development of the watchmaking industry was in full swing, and today's widespread mergers and acquisitions in the sector were still a distant future. The public was ready to recognize and appreciate a product whose technical, aesthetic, and functional qualities were not offered by a newcomer to the market, but by the Rolex brand, which had already earned worldwide fame for the high quality of its timepieces. Initially, the rose was chosen as the company's logo – a reference to historical facts and more specifically to the royal Tudor dynasty (in whose coat of arms, as you know, the rose holds a central place) and whose name was used for the brand's name. After several decades during which the brand was in the shadow of Rolex and all its models even copied the names of the parent company's same models, came 2009, when the corporation decided to invest in a separate path of development for the Tudor brand, which was shown at Baselworld 2009 and reinforced with the new advertising campaign: “Designed for Performance. Engineered for Elegance.” Tudor's communication strategy was aimed at focusing on the technical refinement of its models, and this was shown by the disappearance of the rose from the brand's logo and the concentration on the shield, which became the brand's new logo. The model was first introduced in 2023 and its name reveals the collaboration from which it was born. The goal is to immortalize the new collaboration with the multiple America’s Cup winner and water sports legend – the Alinghi sailing team, whose headquarters are located, as strange as it may sound, in… Geneva. The partnership between Tudor and the Alinghi sailing team started in 2022, and here the brand replaces none other than brands like Audemars Piguet, Hublot, and Omega. The model's sporting spirit complements the heritage it carries – starting with the crown, which is ribbed and oversized, moving on to the dial's design (a deep blue color with red accents – a nod to the team's main sponsor, Red Bull), the composite carbon case (the first time Tudor has used this material), the titanium unidirectional bezel – all of this simply screams that this watch is not just any watch, and the materials used aim to show the strong connection with the partner sailing team. At its heart beats the brand's in-house movement MT 5602, with a 70-hour power reserve and operating at 28,800 vibrations – excellently proven and accessible in its maintenance.