mbeech1,
Everyone is entitled to a personal opinion when it is about style and design. Thank you for yours.
I cannot refute those comments that were made politely but I can fill in some facts and background to put them in context. It is difficult to maintain no changes for a marque with more than 100 years history in wristwatch making. Change is Life.
Your post distilled down to some keypoints:
1) Disappointment in the (lack of) elegance of design and the Tank MC size is too large.
Size
Indeed the Tank MC watch is larger than the old Tank models like the LC, Francaise or Solo, but it has been designed to be an addition to the catalogue and not a replacement for the smaller watches. The design brief was to design a new watch as a "masculine expression of elegance".
That is the trend that is completely in keeping with the most important people at Cartier -- the customers.
Santos-Dumont
The Santos-Dumont (square) range of watches with similar large movements are flying out of the shops and the Tank MC is a response to customers asking for a masculine Tank. The Tank MC is not as long as the huge Tank Americaine; that shape is usually used for the watches with grand complications. Tank MC is designed around the base calibre 1904MC but also has to accommodate the large square calibre 9611MC.
Tank MC with 9611MC movement
Design
The new Tank MC exhibits some elegant design motifs and perhaps even more so than our favourite vintage Tank LC, which after all is like a simple military field stretcher or armoured vehicle. The combination of brushed and polished surfaces adjacent to each other and the juxtaposition of the straight and curved lines were carefully designed for form and function; fitting a range of wrists.
See previous article about military stretchers and armoured vehicles: CLICK the URL below:
2) Seconds sub-dial too large.
This may be a personal choice but specifically in the masculine design brief, there are some relationship rules of mathematical proportion being applied;
- balancing the Cartier logo and using the proportions of a recessed circle within a short rectangular dial
- but still allowing the seconds to be visualised despite the orbiting hours and minutes hands.
Tank MC
3) Date completely unnecessary.
Some may prefer the absence of a date window but Cartier has a history of offering date displays since the 1970s. It is not a betrayal of their watchmaking heritage to continue to do so. I recall the Santos (1978), Panthere (1983), Pasha (1985) and Tank Americaine gents (1989), Tank Americaine ladies (1996), Tank Francaise for the 3rd millennium (1995) all had date display.
In the field, customers asking for date display (in a masculine watch for daily use) far outnumber those preferring none.
There may be a reversed preference if applied to a dress watch like the Tank LC, under french cuffs or a tuxedo, for only the duration of a gala dinner. Most of my dinners only straddle two adjacent dates at most....
The smaller Tank models are still available if the masculine Tank MC is not to taste.
Regards,
MTF
This message has been edited by MTF on 2013-07-15 08:26:22