New Watch! • 19 Dec 2016
Watch Of The Month: Tudor Pelagos LHD
Tudor’s latest dive watch is straight of left field, so to speak. The Pelagos LHD (short for “left-hand drive”) is a variant of the brand’s bestselling titanium dive watch.
With the crown on the left of the case, the Pelagos LHD is meant for left-handers. It is modelled on a small number of Submariner watches Tudor supplied to the French navy in the 1970s. While most of these watches had a conventional crown on the right side of the case, a few were inverted to cater to left-handed divers.
Not only did Tudor rely on the vintage military Submariner for inspiration, it also gave the Pelagos a retro feel with ivory-coloured Super-Luminova on the dial and hands. Similar in tone to the aged tritium found on vintage dive watches, the ivory lume is matched with “Pelagos” in red print, yet another detail derived from late 20th century dive timepieces.
But the tweaks to the Pelagos LHD are not merely aesthetic. Tudor did not merely rotate its in-house calibre MT5612 180 degrees to fit the new Pelagos. The movement had to be modified slightly in order to keep the date display at three o’clock while having the crown opposite, resulting in the new calibre MT5612-LHD, which still has the COSC chronometer certification and silicon hairspring that distinguish all of Tudor’s in-house movements.
Another unusual feature of the Pelagos LHD is the serial number engraved on the back. Tudor traditionally numbers its watches discreetly with a barely decipherable serial number that spans all models produced. In contrast, the new diver is numbered individually on the back, a feature unique to the Pelagos LHD. While not a limited edition, the number is the closest thing Tudor has made to a special edition wristwatch.
The rest of the Pelagos LHD is identical to the standard watch, meaning the 42mm case is lightweight titanium and boasts a 500m depth rating as well as a helium escape valve for deep sea saturation diving. The bracelet is also titanium, featuring Tudor’s patented clasp that adjusts automatically as the wearer descends into the water, causing the wrist to shrink slightly.
Best of all, the new Pelagos costs exactly the same as the ordinary version.
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