Review: Montblanc Heritage GMT

The famous luxury pen manufacturer Montblanc has been making watches since 1997, a far cry from its 114-year existence. How did this happen? Should Montblanc be making watches? Are they any good? All those answers and more, coming up.

If there’s a simple answer to the question, “Why do Montblanc make watches?”, it’s, “To make money.” But with the simplicity of that answer comes the loss of nuance. If everything were all just about the money, we’d all be doing the most lucrative, boring thing imaginable. Within 2020’s top-paying jobs you’ll find the following: lawyer, sales manager, business operations manager, financial advisor—jobs that, I’m sure you’ll agree, don’t tend to be hugely exciting.

Except, to the people who do those jobs best, they are. Here’s the thing about success: humans tend to require some sort of emotional investment to draw the best out from within them, and so when someone chooses to try and make money making pens or watches or whatever, it can never really be all about the money to be truly successful.

Of course, it was a sensible decision for Montblanc, because the kind of guys and gals who buy nice pens tend to be into nice watches too. Except that, given what happened just a few decades prior to 1997’s inauguration of the Montblanc watch, making mechanical watches would have been considered a very stupid idea indeed. The late nineties was such a tumultuous time to make the crossover, with brands like Omega on the path to recovery, the genesis of contemporary legends like Urwerk and Richard Mille—to say the move was ballsy is underselling it.

Montblanc was founded in 1906

If you take the number of successful watchmaking firms versus the many unsuccessful ones, add the cost of actually establishing said firm, be it successful or not, you’ll soon come to realise that this was a project that someone at Montblanc held very dear to their heart. That someone was Norbert Platt, then CEO of Montblanc, a role he’d held since 1987. Despite his critics—including a journalist who asked where to fill the watch with ink—Platt continued headlong into the unknown.

And not only is it a fool’s errand to start what is effectively a new watch business with the singular motive of making money, but to double down on that foolhardiness and build a workshop too demonstrates less of a commitment to profit, and more one to passion. The cynical among you may not see eye-to-eye with me on this, and I understand—but a spell in charge of a century-old legend with your neck on the block over an idea like making watches would be sure to make you see things from the other perspective.

I’m confident in saying this because, although not every watch from the company has been a masterpiece, Montblanc hasn’t just sat idly by making mid-level models to discount-sell at airports—the sense of Platt’s enthusiasm for the project, which he has since handed on to his successors, remains very much apparent. Let me show you what I mean.

Montblanc is based in Hamburg, Germany

This is the Montblanc Heritage GMT. Being British, I, like all my fellow Brits, enjoy a good dose of irony, and its presence in the naming of a watch “Heritage” when its origins draw back to the same vintage as Home Alone 3 has not escaped me. Here ends the list of things wrong with the Montblanc Heritage GMT. There are some things that may have been less than favourable with it, such as the £2,395 price for an ETA-powered watch which may have been a little high—however that doesn’t really matter anyway since they’re all sold now.

The list of things that are good with the Montblanc Heritage GMT, however, is long, especially when configured with the flavour of the day, salmon. You get a sense very early on with a watch how much the creator’s heart was in it, whether they truly cared about the details or just wanted to get it done, and the Heritage GMT rather surprisingly tells me that its conception was caring and considerate, and not post-Christmas party penitence.

It seems almost ridiculous to say, but the fact the case is 40mm and not forty-two is already a great sign that someone knew what they were doing with this watch. So many times does a design hit the market that looks great—until you realise that it was scaled for the wrist John Cena. No, the Heritage GMT is thoughtfully balanced and considerately judged, a steel case that sits on your wrist rather than hovering over it like a low-flying UFO. It feels very Jaeger-LeCoultre in that respect, and that’s no complaint.

Montblanc is famous for its pens. However, it also makes watches, jewellery and leather/travel goods

Where this watch really makes its bacon is on the dial, which is pretty much bacon-coloured. The salmon trend proceeded the blue-dial trend, and a trend although it may be, it’s undoubtedly one that’s not going out of fashion any time soon. If A. Lange & Söhne has done it, that basically means it’s fine. The colour may seem very of the moment, but really it’s just a resurgence of a similar trend that occurred at the beginning of the last century, a bit like how people all now seem to be dressing how I did as a kid, which is weirding me out.

But a dial is not made by its colour, and so it’s in the attention to detail that the emotional investment in this watch really stands out. A slew of textures and colours, balanced with knowing deliberation, separates the GMT track from the seconds from the hours. Red, blue and black—including a black plating for the majority of the hands and markers—elevate the perceived value of this watch to a casual, “Is that a Patek?” level, with the deflated reply of “No” being somewhat softened by the use of the revived classic logo. Even the tiny lume plots on the hours feel like a well-thought-out decision rather than the afterthought they can so often be.

Every piece together offers a uniformity that doesn’t occur by accident. So many watches get elements right yet fail as a whole, and whilst this isn’t exactly a piece of massively collectible horology, its intentions feel honest and pure, a replication of the visual drama and purity of those watches a century ago. There’s a reason it’s taken this long to feature one of these here, and that’s because they don’t get sold on very often. Where I’m from, that’s a pretty good sign.

Collectively, the Heritage GMT feels like the work of someone who not only wanted to get paid, but also someone who wanted to leave at the end of the day with their head held high, and for a company to allow that to happen, that needs to be a thread that runs from top to bottom. This could have well as easily been a generic-looking watch with a Montblanc logo on it to sell alongside the generic-looking wallets and belts with Montblanc logos on them, and to be honest that would have probably been more appealing to a broader market—but it isn’t. It almost doesn’t matter what the name on the dial says. It’s more about the attitudes of the people who make it.

Looking for a Montblanc watch? Click here to shop now