By admin 
While mechanical Tag Heuer Replica chronographs are almost exclusively powered by the in-house Heuer 02 caliber, the three-hand models from the Swiss luxury watch manufacturer are primarily made from off-the-shelf products from Sellita or ETA – more or less “camouflaged”, for example under the name Caliber 5 in the Aquaracer, Autavia or three-hand Carreras. On the one hand, the use of standard calibers has ensured that TAG Heuer’s three-hand models are still reasonably affordable. On the other hand, off-the-shelf products do not really do justice to TAG Heuer’s image.
A few years ago, Tudor outsourced watch movement production to Kenissi SA and brought Chanel on board as a shareholder in order to bring some serious horsepower to the road and to create a counterweight to the powerful market players Sellita and Swatch Group/ETA. Chanel paid 20 million Swiss francs for 20% of the shares. This was used to finance, among other things, a brand new, 150-meter-long factory in Le Locle. The chief of Kenissi is a well-known name: Jean-Paul Girardin, former Vice President of Breitling.
Now, of course, one can critically question why a heavyweight like TAG Heuer (part of the LVMH group; in the top 10 Swiss watch brands with sales of CHF 682) is unable to develop a “simple” three-hand manufacture caliber in-house. After all, it also worked with the chronograph calibers with an in-house development in the form of the Heuer 02 caliber.
The crux of the matter: As revealed in an interview, there were problems in series production. As a result, the TAG Heuer Autavia three-hand variant was relaunched at the beginning of 2020 – but without a carbon hairspring. Since then: radio silence. The project seems to have failed (for now?), but it certainly swallowed up a million or two that are now missing elsewhere (for example for the development of its own three-hand caliber).
But back to the cooperation between TAG Heuer and Kenissi: Various magazines like to argue that it is really great that TAG Heuer does not want to reinvent the wheel, but instead relies on tried and tested methods through the cooperation with Kenissi – in the end, this saves TAG Heuer the high investments, which also benefits the customer, who would indirectly support these investments when buying a watch.
Im offiziellen TAG Heuer-Newsletter heißt es: “With a new manufacture movement that is COSC-certified and produced exclusively for TAG Heuer by Kenissi Manufacture, it is a certified chronometer, as indicated on the watch dial. This new movement project represents an important milestone for TAG Heuer in term of reliability and quality.”
In short, TAG Heuer’s change of strategy to work with Kenissi on the three-hand calibers is understandable and fundamentally sensible – the Aquaracer model series is significantly upgraded. From the end customer’s point of view, however, one can only sincerely hope that TAG Heuer does not overstretch the cooperation or the appeal of its cooperation partner Rolex/Tudor.