About this watch

Reference 116508 in 18 ct yellow gold with the champagne dial and black counters — the combination that picked up the Pikachu name and kept it. This is the generation before the ceramic-bezel gold Daytona, and the difference is the first thing you notice. The bezel here is gold, engraved with the tachymetric scale and polished, not a Cerachrom insert. It means the whole top of the watch is one metal and one finish, so the case reads as a single object rather than a gold frame around a black ring. It also means the scale can wear, which the ceramic cannot — a trade the later reference made in the other direction. A tachymeter is simpler than it looks. Start the chronograph as something passes a marker, stop it a measured mile or kilometre later, and read the average speed straight off the bezel where the seconds hand lands. No arithmetic, no second scale. Champagne with black registers is the reverse of the black-dial gold Daytona, and it is the better of the two in this metal: black sub-dials punched into a warm gold face give the eye somewhere to rest, where an all-dark dial in a gold case tends to close up. The movement is calibre 4130, the automatic chronograph Rolex used across…