Why We Love It

Two-Tone is cool. GMT-Masters are cool. That's why.

The Reference 16753 might have Miami Vice styling, but it’s at heart, its the same GMT-Master that Pan Am pilots and astronauts alike strapped to their wrists. With two-tone watches making a return to current styling sensibilities, this Reference 16753 dating from about 1986 looks fresh and new while still possessing a vintage pedigree.

Fitted with a glossy dial with "maxi" style hour indices, 

Paired with a black nylon NATO-style strap with gold tone hardware you can channel your inner Crockett (or Tubbs) and still be en vogue.

The Story

Born of an association with Pan American Air Lines, an airline known in its early days for the rough-and-ready nature of their pilots, the GMT needed to be as rough-and-ready as they were. In turn, each feature of the watch—down to its colorful bezel—was born from need, not aesthetics. Every element that went into it stressed form over function, necessity over adornment.

But something happened that changed the watch industry forever: the Quartz Crisis. Consumers bought quartz watches in droves, and sales of mechanical watches fell drastically. Those Swiss manufactures that adopted the new technology were not always met by success; many went out of business.

Not so, Rolex. Instead of foundering, the venerable manufacture elected to follow a risky—but ultimately rewarding—strategy. If the other watch companies were falling over themselves to offer the same thing, then Rolex would offer something different.

And that was… gold. So at a time when the desirability of mechanical watches hit an all-time low, Rolex opted to go upmarket and offer more pieces in precious metals, raising prices across the board in the early 1980s.

Of course, Rolex had cased dress watches such as the Datejust and Day-Date in gold for decades, and started phasing the metal into its sports lines like the Submariner and GMT as early as the 1960s. But during the quartz crisis, production of gold variants saw an increase in production, particularly on sports watches such as the GMT-Master. Of course, as a stop-gap price point between base steel models and range-topping solid gold variants, Rolex also increased production on models that combined touches of gold to a steel case, and integrated features such a quick-set date and a newly designed glossy dial, which made the GMT both sleeker and more functional.