The Air King: Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown
Rolex’s revived Air King arrived back on the scene after a two-year hiatus and with it came a strong divide in opinion amongst Rolex fans. We look back at one of the most controversial releases from Rolex three years after its release.
The Rolex Air King was released in the mid-1940s and – generally speaking – displayed a classic design aesthetic: clean lines, balanced curves and a smaller 34mm case. It was a reliable sort of design. Traditional and timeless. And affordable at that too. The name – Air King – was supposedly coined after Rolex founder Hans Wildorf learnt how much British pilots wore Rolex’s watch during World War II.
As time went on, the Air King evolved. Some models came with simple applied baton hour markers, others with Arabic numberals at 3, 6 and 9, while other dials carried Roman numerals printed on them. Along the way, the bezel whilst often found smooth, had also been varied to feature as engine-turned too.
Then all of a sudden, the Air King vanished. Gone from the Rolex line up like a stealth bomber evades sight of radar. An apt description, as two years later the Air King reappeared on our screens at Basel 2016 to some media fanfare and frenzy. And not necessarily the good kind of frenzy. The frenzy was attributable to Rolex fans who either: a) loved the new watch, b) hated it with vitriol matched only during one of Kanye West’s twitter tirades, or c) were just downright confused by it all. If Rolex wanted people to start talking, this watch definitely did the job.
The updated Air King 116900 comes with a bewildering set of design features. The dial is presented to us with large, applied, white gold Arabic numerals at 3, 6 and 9 (much in the same way as the Rolex Explorer) and printed 5-minute interval markers. Two lines of text can be found on the dial to note Rolex’s superlative COSC certification (Rolex has been offering this since the ‘50s – although the Air King only gained this status in the mid-2000s) together with the original “Air King” logo. To match this undercurrent of familiarity the Rolex logo can also be found in the usual spot, but, this time in green and with the Rolex crown logo in yellow.
The watch features Rolex’s trademark mercedes hands in white gold, a green lollipop seconds hands, a luminous triangle at 12 o’clock and Oystersteel bracelet with Rolex’s folding clasp and comfort extension link. It also comes with the 3131 movement, a 48-hour power reserve, and, like Rolex’s Milgauss, an anti-magnetic case – handy if you find yourself in a tardis with Dr. Who.
If that all sounds a bit overwhelming, it’s because it probably is. When I first picked up the Air King, I wasn’t sure what was going on. Why the minute markers with a 3, 6 and 9? Why the green and the yellow? Did I like it? Did I hate it?
The Air King and I had a bit of a weird relationship at first: one of admiration (I loved the sparing use of green, the lack of crown guards and the lollipop seconds hand as it elegantly swept around the dial track like a racing car), but also one of distrust (why the 3, 6 9 and the 5-minute intervals?). But, after a while, the watch started to make sense. It worked. Maybe it was just me getting used to it after a few days on the wrist, but the design elements fused together well and created a balance, in a way that no picture on Instagram could capture.
Cupping the Air King in the palm of my hand, it packed more weight than I thought it would – it weighs in at approximately 152g. In my head, I expected the watch to demonstrate those same qualities as previous Air Kings. And (as numerous blogs, websites, forums have noticed) therein lies the problem: the name. You’d think it’d display the same traits as its forefathers – small, classic and pithy. It does nothing of the sort. Whereas previous versions of the Air King were nuanced and subdued, this new iteration seemed to be shouting: “Hey, look at me!”.
I’ve always been a Submariner guy. I even went into one of Rolex’s authorised dealer stores with the intention of purchasing a Submariner. Then the Air King came to the show, and the Submariner said, “Who the hell invited this guy?”. But after weighing up an offering of the Air King and the black date Submariner that lay before me at the store, I went with the Air King. As they say, the proof of the pudding and all that.
The big plus about that this watch is that it’s one versatile beast: it effortlessly switches from sporty, dress down, lounging on the beach to suited and booted and ready for work. The only one downside I would say about this watch after living with it for two years is that the smooth bezel is a scratch, and fingerprint, magnet. But other than that, it gets a thumbs up from me.
I’ve seen a host of reactions to this watch online. From: “Rolex clearly recycled a bunch of dials left over from the Explorer”, to “OMG. Love it”, to “Yuck! No thanks!”. Watches generally provoke these sorts of reactions – that’s the nature of design; that’s the nature of art. But it feels like the sharply divided reactions represent two schools of thought in the watch world. On the one side, you have the traditionalists that enjoy Rolex for what Rolex has always been good at: straight-forward, faithful design classics. On the other, you have a school of watch enthusiasts open to evolution and experimentation with designs from one of most prestigious watch brands in the world.
I think your love (or hate) for this watch largely boils down to which school of thought you find yourself in. To this day people are still talking about whether it’s a great watch or not; take a look on some well-known forums like The Rolex Forum, which remain littered with posts about the topic.
Expectations here weren’t helped by the fact that Rolex used a name which evokes memories of a completely different watch in Rolex history. To manage the outcry, the Air King probably should have been called something completely different. Saying that, if Rolex had done this perhaps the watch wouldn’t have caused the controversy it has today. And as the English writer William Hazitt once said, “When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest”. The marketing behemoth that is Rolex knows this better than anyone else.
