If you know much about us, and you shouldn’t since we’ve spent the past 13 years trying to be as low profile as possible, you’ll know we love a good watch at Cyclry. We chose our words carefully, as we don’t ‘love watches’ – because some of them are very ugly.
Which makes a perfect transition to the new Tour de France cash-in watches from Breitling and Richard Mille. First, the ugliest thing we’ve ever seen:
Richard Mille RM 64-01 Manual Winding Tourbillon Colnago
Tadej Pogacar is all over the marketing for this one, but he’s said he’s not going to ride it when racing. That’s curious, since he’s often spotted sporting a Richard Mille during a race. One can only assume it’s because this one looks like a Lego kids watch.
Richard Mille has always shared a special bond with the world of cycling, an affinity fuelled as much by admiration for its athletes as by fascination with a mechanical universe in which each component and every single gramme can determine performance.
Over the years, this closeness to the peloton has deepened. Richard Mille has drawn icons of the sport into its orbit, including Mark Cavendish, Mathieu van der Poel, Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates. Collaborating with Colnago, the legendary Italian bicycle manufacturer, felt like a natural next step.
Got it, bikes are precise machines and so are watches. How many meetings did this messaging take to settle on? They continue to hammer this point home, saying “By fusing the aesthetic and technical codes of Richard Mille and Colnago, the RM 64-01 Tourbillon Colnago transcends the mere sports watch category. It is the convergence of two visions of engineering, both driven by a desire to create objects capable of delivering exceptional performance and artistic excellence.”
We do see the bike frame and gears details in there. We do acknowledge it’s a cool idea. We just think it also looks really fucking stupid.
The RM 64-01 is a limited run of 50 watches. The price is CHF 800,000. If you’re not keeping up with your exchange rates, we’ll save you a Google: that’s $1,000,000 USD or £750,000.
Breitling Top Time B01 Eddy Merckx
Breitling sees Richard Mille doing its thing and says “we see your GOAT and raise you.” This is the Eddy Merckx tribute watch, catchily named Top Time B01 Chronograph 41 Eddy Merckx.
Breitling has form for cycling legends watches, having previously created Coppi and Bartali editions. Now they’re doing Eddy, with the Top Time design that originated back when Merckx was still racing, which was the brand’s “unconventional chronograph, made for speed, style, and self-expression.”
The Top Time features signature details, which feel like we’re having a stroke when we read them. “Squircle subdials, mushroom pushers, trim proportions, and a balanced layout that stay true to its origins.” Sure. Some words that mean nothing, and some other words that do mean things organized in such a way that they’re not really saying anything.
The element that makes it Eddy Merckx is the yellow face and his signature on it. It does look fucking good, to be fair, although maybe that’s because we just looked at the Richard Mille.
The Breitling Top Time B01 Eddy Merckx is limited to 525 pieces in tribute to Merckx’s 525 career victories. And you can buy about 124 of them for the price of the Richard Mille. Quick maths, that makes it $8,050.
Bravur Grand Tour Collection
If you’re on a budget, Swedish watchmaker Bravur has a Grand Tour collection that costs a mere $2,550.
It’s ok. Bit pink, which makes us think “grand tour” really means “we released this for the Giro but we’re not allowed to say its name.”
We’d go Breitling, Bravur, Richard Mille in our power rankings. If money was no object, the Eddy is the only one we’d consider. If they’d priced it at $525 to honor his victories, we’d already own it.