SÖNER Tank Royal: The Most Literal Tank Watch Ever Made?

Why I did not want another Tank tribute

Almost every tank watch made since 1917 copies the same thing: Louis Cartier's original design. The proportions, the brancards, the Roman numerals, the blued hands. Some copies are good and some are not, but they are all copies of a watch, and after a hundred years that family tree has become very crowded. If you want the background, I have written about what a tank watch is and where the name comes from.

When I started drawing our own tank, I did not want to add one more branch to that tree. So I went back to the thing Cartier is said to have looked at in the first place, which is not a watch at all. It is the tank. The question I asked was simple: what happens if you take the shape of a real tank, seen from above, and build the watch case out of it?

The case is the tank, seen from above

Look at the Tank Royal from the side and you see the tracks. The brancards, the two vertical flanks of the case, are rounded on top and flat underneath, the same profile as the individual plates of a caterpillar track. It makes the case look heavier and more mechanical than a classic tank watch, even though the whole watch is only 6 mm thin.

Then look at it from the front. Around the dial sits a raised frame that steps up from the case, so the watch is built on two levels instead of one. That raised frame is the turret. It gives the case a vertical architecture you can feel with your thumb, and it is the detail that makes most people stop and ask what they are looking at.

Hands that become a cannon at 12

The hands are broad, black batons with sharp ends. On their own they are simply very legible. But when both of them point to 12 o'clock and overlap, they form one long black barrel pointing straight up from the turret. It happens twice a day, at noon and at midnight, and once you have seen it you will catch yourself checking the watch at noon just to see it again.

A crown you can barely see

A crown sticking out from the side would have broken the silhouette of the tank, so it is hidden. The crown sits inside the case flank, flush with the track profile. To set the time you push it out with a fingernail, turn it, and push it back. From the front the case is one clean, symmetrical shape with nothing interrupting the armour.

IV, not IIII

Almost every watch with Roman numerals, from Cartier and Patek Philippe to Rolex and Longines, writes the four as IIII. It is an old convention, chosen to balance the VIII on the other side of the dial. The Tank Royal uses the correct numeral, IV. It is a small decision, but it is the kind of decision this watch is made of: if something is done only because everyone else does it, we question it.

What is inside the Tank Royal

Underneath the design it is a very practical watch. The movement is the Swiss ETA 901.001 quartz, chosen because it is slim and accurate and because its battery lasts around 11 years, so you can wear the watch for a decade without thinking about it. The case is 800HV hardened stainless steel, far harder than the standard 316L steel used in most watches, under an anti-reflective sapphire crystal, and it is water resistant to 5 ATM.

Steel or gold

There are two versions. The Tank Royal Steel at $920 is polished steel, the most honest reading of the design, where nothing is added and the geometry does all the work. The Tank Royal Gold at $965 has the same hardened steel case with polished gold plating, and in gold the alternating curves and flats of the track flanks catch the light one after another, so the track pattern reads even more clearly. Both come on a black alligator-pattern leather strap.

Pre-order and delivery

The Tank Royal is available for pre-order now. Deliveries start in December 2026 and orders ship in the order they were placed, in time for Christmas. We cover all import duties, so the price you see is the price you pay, and like every SÖNER watch it comes with our 10-year international warranty.