Audemars Piguet Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin (ref. 16202)
The Royal Oak burst onto the watch scene in 1972. This year, the brand celebrates the model’s 50th anniversary by introducing the new Audemars Piguet Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin (ref. 16202). Mark McArthur Christie looks into this latest iteration of the iconic model.
It’s 1972 and you’re waking up as the sun slants through the blinds in your flat in London’s newest and smartest development – The Barbican’s Speed House. As a successful ‘something in the City’ type, you’ve only just moved into your new pad to be close to your firm’s Basinghall Street offices. You roll out of bed, flick the shower on and head to the kitchen, where you fill your Cona with water and ground coffee and set it on the stove to brew. You smile; in your dedicated space in the underground car park below you is your brand new, V8 Mercedes W116 450 SE. It’ll rinse most other cars on the road whilst being only slightly less well-appointed than your flat. And on your wrist is the new watch from Audemars Piguet – the stainless steel Royal Oak. You picked it up on your last trip to Switzerland trip while you were working on Raiffeisen Bank’s sponsorship deal with Gerhard Berger. Life is indeed good.
Hard to believe it’s been fifty years since AP launched the Ref 5402A Royal Oak at the annual Swiss Watch Show in Basel. At the time it was – in a very good way – nuts. For a start, this was a luxury watch that wasn’t made from gold. Instead, the case and integrated strap were milled from a piece of stainless steel (the prototypes had been made in gold, though, simply because it was cheaper than developing the tooling to produce a short run of precision-machined stainless steel cases). And it was big – 39mm – in a world where luxury watches were usually 36mm.
Today, the Royal Oak has more than justified Audemars Piguet’s faith in its designer, Gerald Genta, and is now very much part of the horological landscape. Unsurprising then, that AP is making the most of its 50th anniversary by launching a new 39 mm Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin ref. 16202 with a new movement, the cal. 7121. You can have your new 16202 encased in stainless steel, just like the old days, or in platinum, yellow gold or even pink gold.
If you choose stainless steel, you get a watch with a straight genetic link to 1972. The case and bracelet are still hand-finished with Genta’s mixture of satin brushing and polishing to the case, bracelet and bezel chamfers. You also get the now-iconic Petite Tapisserie dial. This one comes in a Bleu Nuit, ‘Nuage 50’ (night blue, cloud 50) hue. The firm originally behind the colour was Geneva-based dial maker Stern Frères, but today AP makes each dial in-house. Just as in the 1970s, though, to create the depth of hue needed, the dial maker has to immerse each dial in a galvanic bath for just the right amount of time. Not long enough and you get a purple dial. Grab a quick coffee and leave it too long and your dial turns out black. To hit the desired colour you not only need to be a properly time-served dial maker, you need the bath to be at just the right temperature with the right mix of chemicals too. Originally, to protect the finish you’d apply a thin layer of varnish mixed with a few drops of No 50 black colour to the newly minted dial. Today, AP uses physical vapour deposition (PVD) to give an even spread of colour.
If you’re perhaps a little less of a traditionalist, or just plain wealthier, you can choose your new Royal Oak in yellow or even pink gold. The 18-carat pink gold watch comes with a smoked grey dial, while the 18-carat yellow gold version’s dial is a dark, smoked yellow gold. Platinum, on the other hand, gets a smoked green sunburst finish. If you’re of a certain age and enjoy your motorcycles, you might even be reminded of the wonderful smoked paint finishes on BMW’s R100RS luxury sports tourer, a contemporary of the Royal Oak.
The dial is as much part of the Royal Oak’s look as Genta’s diving helmet porthole case. It’s not the sort of thing one could just stamp out by the dozen, either. When Stern Frères made the original dials (sadly, the firm closed its doors in 2016), it did it with a guilloché machine. This hand-turned gadget allows the craftsman to carve out hundreds of the Royal Oak’s trademark tiny, truncated square pyramid shapes on the dial from a copy-master. AP acquired an old guilloché copy machine (you try finding a new one – we’ll wait) and honed its skills so it could produce its own dials.
If you’re sharp-eyed you’ll spot the hour markers and hands – they’re the same ‘baignoire’ type as Genta chose for his original watch. Baignoire by both name and nature as they allow AP to fill the whole marker-tub with lume, so not only are things easy to read in daylight but at night too. The markers match the case metal of each watch.
The AP monogram stays where it has been from the beginning, just above the 6 o’clock marker, with the ‘Audemars Piguet Automatic’ legend just below 12. There’s no need for anyone to take a DNA test to prove parentage here.
What has changed and been updated is the engine inside the case. It’s more than worth taking a look through the sapphire display back at what’s behind it – the new cal. 7121. This new movement replaces the original cal. 2121, which was deserving of retirement, lounging in a deckchair by Lake Geneva and enjoying a slice or two of Madeira cake with a cup of afternoon tea. In its day, the cal. 2121 was the thinnest auto with a central rotor and a date indicator (the date wheel and rotor both add bulk, remember) measuring just a tiny squeeze over 3mm. By comparison, a pound coin is only 0.2mm thinner. The new movement is a bit of a victim of inflation at 3.2mm, but it’s been designed by and produced by AP’s engineers and watchmakers to fit the extra-thin 8.1 mm “Jumbo” case by putting on muscle rather than fat.
The new 33 jewel movement has taken AP’s team five years to develop and they’ve managed to shoehorn in more new technology with a bigger mainspring barrel, a quick-date corrector and an in-house designed twin-reverser on the winding weight (a unique version for these 50th-anniversary models) so it can wind in both directions. That chunkier mainspring barrel means the new movement stays accurate for longer as it doesn’t need to deal with power decay from the mainspring in the same way.
Accuracy should be improved (not that there was much wrong with it before) with the new inertia blocks set into the rim of the balance. Why put them there? To reduce the air friction created by external rim-mounted screws. That might sound like the horological equivalent of gnat-straining, but think about how fast and how often a balance oscillates. The effect of air friction is actually significant, so removing it should sharpen the cal. 7121 even further. How fast? In this case, 4 Hz or 28,800 VpH.
As well as being a thing of engineering beauty, the new movement is something of an aesthetic winner too. Look at the way the two-point mounted balance bridge reflects the bridge holding the mainspring barrel; it gives the movement real visual unity. And that’s without the final touches; the 268 parts are variously finished with Côtes de Genève, anglage and circular graining.
This sort of watchmaking and visual pernicketiness (always a good thing) extends even to the winding weight. As you’d expect by now, it reflects the same brushing and polishing as the case. But for this anniversary year, AP will also fit each watch with a special openworked oscillating weight in 22-carat gold with a “50 years” logo and an engraved Audemars Piguet signature. The colour of the weight even matches the metal of the case. Neat.
With so many firms trying to ‘update’ their watches to make them fit the latest trend, it’s good to see Audemars Piguet not just sticking to their knitting out of stubbornness, a lack of ideas or even plain old arrogance, but simply because they got it right first time. They’ve concentrated on the area where watchmaking really has moved on by improving and updating the Royal Oak’s internals. By doing so, they’ve produced a watch that should, quite comfortably, last the next fifty years. Pity the bureaucrats wouldn’t let Mercedes launch a re-edition of the W116 to go with it and maybe a one bedroom flat in Speed House, albeit that will set you back £1m. Not all progress is good.
Further reading
https://www.audemarspiguet.com/
Technical specification
- Model: Audemars Piguet Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin (ref. 16202)
- Reference: 16202ST.OO.1240ST.01 (stainless steel)
- Reference: 16202ST.OO.1240OR.01 (18-ct pink gold)
- Reference: 16202ST.OO.1240BA.01 (18-ct yellow gold)
- Reference: 16202ST.OO.1240PT.01 platinum)
- Case: Diameter 39 mm; height 8.1mm; sapphire crystal to front and exhibition case back
- Functions: Hours; minutes; date
- Movement: Calibre 7121; self-winding movement; frequency 19,800 vph (2.75Hz); 33 jewels; 268 parts; power reserve 55 hours
- Bracelet: matching bracelet with AP folding clasp
- Prices start from £27,900 (RRP as at 22.2.2022)