Design Deepdive: The Air-King, a Non-Chronograph Chronograph

Having just completed my first set of a three-watch collection, I dived back into the Rolex rabbit hole in search of my next timepiece. During my search, I couldn’t unsee the Air-King—and it’s not a compliment. Its busy dial hurt my brain. To relieve the pain, I decided to understand what the designers were trying to achieve, hoping to find anything to justify its existence in the Rolex lineup and potentially in my collection.

After reading about the history of the Air-King line and the latest set of watches, it dawned on me that Rolex was trying to create a “Non-Chronograph Chronograph.” You see, Rolex put a lot of effort into custom-building the chronograph for the Bloodhound car project and wanted to translate it into a watch they could sell, but I don’t think they had the movement that they could mass produce.

Before going any further, we need to understand how the Bloodhound car’s chronograph works because it’s key to understanding the design decision. The chronograph was specifically created to time the one-hour turnaround needed for world record speed attempts, requiring two runs within that hour. If the full exercise runs past an hour, all efforts have been in vain and the record will not be approved. The chronograph resembles a 60-minute timer, where the "minute" hand tracks seconds from 0 to 60, and the "hour" hand indicates the minutes elapsed. The small Explorer-style sub-dial at the 6 o’clock position actually displays the time of day.

I am sure that Rolex doesn’t have the movement required to recreate such a chronograph in a mass-produced watch, so the next best thing they could do was play with the design of the dial. And looking at the final product, I think they did the best they could, and I am quite satisfied.

First of all, you need to trick your mind. Imagine the Air-King without the hour hand. That’s it. That's how Rolex re-creates the Bloodhound Chronograph on a mass-produced watch without having to create a new chronograph movement. Again, this is purely aesthetic, and you can’t use it as a chronograph, obviously.

But what about the sub-dial? You can’t sell a watch that doesn’t tell time. In this case, ignore the second hand and the minute indices. Here you go:

Both the 116900 (v1.0) and 126900 (v2.0) of the Air-King have their pluses and minuses, but I’d choose the 116900 because it’s easier to play these tricks in my mind if the 3/6/9 hour indices are in a different color from the minute indices. Moreover, the 5-minute mark does not have zero, which is how it's supposed to be.

If the current iteration sells well, I think Rolex will have a surprise for us when they release v3.0 of the Air-King. If I had to speculate, I’d guess they might make the Air-King a real chronograph with a center dial movement similar to the Mido Multi-Centerchrono watches.

Another design direction they could take is to make the Air-King a less blingy Sky-Dweller and without the day, date, and GMT complications.

References:

• https://www.rolex.com/en-us/watches/air-king/m126900-0001 

• https://monochrome-watches.com/essence-speed-rolex-partners-bloodhound-ssc/ 

• https://www.bobswatches.com/rolex-blog/watch-review/watch-air-king-reference-116900.html 

• https://www.thejewelleryeditor.com/watches/article/rolex-develops-bespoke-instruments-of-speed-for-bloodhound-ssc-supersonic-car/ 

• https://www.midowatches.com/us/mido-universe-collectors/mido-multicenterchrono.html