Perfect replica Hublot’s motto (or at least its guiding principle for most of its R&D work) can be summed up in three adjectives: “be the first, different and unique”. There’s no denying that the Big Bang Unico GMT meets these criteria overall.
For one thing, it’s a rare beast, surprisingly rare even: Hublot hasn’t made another GMT watch (let alone a worldtimer) in the past 20 years, with the exception of a King Power Unico GMT in 2012. Despite plunging headlong into the production of the most extravagant complications and breaking record after record (in the realm of power reserves, for instance) UK best fake Hublot watches have almost never ventured into the domain of the GMT, the simplest of complications, requiring little more than three or four extra wheels and a second central hours hand. Could it be that such models are just too simple for Hublot?
Whatever the reason, the luxury copy Hublot Big Bang Unico GMT unveiled in 2017 is indeed unique, being the only Big Bang Unico with this travel complication ever to have entered the collection. There were none before it and there have been none since (with the exception of a very brief All Black series produced in collaboration with Japanese stylist Yohji Yamamoto three years later, in May 2020).
Unlike the latter, the 2017 model wasn’t a limited edition, but it didn’t get beyond its first production run either; the stock gradually ran out and that was the end of that, even though the timepiece was cleverly designed, with a rather ingenious new take on the GMT complication. The basic idea was to make the piece easier to use. With that in mind, the two pushers on the case were repurposed away from their usual chronograph functions and were indeed restyled to differentiate them from their counterparts for the more usual application, being endowed with a rectangular shape that instead brings to mind the legacy pushers on the first top replica Hublot Big Bang models.
The 1:1 wholesale replica watches‘ pusher at 2 o’clock is used to move the time forward in one-hour increments, while the one at 4 o’clock moves it back; a safety device prevents both pushers being activated simultaneously. The hours hand for local time is decoupled from the minutes and seconds gears, enabling it to be adjusted independently and dispensing with the need to synchronise all the hands whenever the time zone is changed. The central and GMT time functions are also independent of each other.
The day/night indication for home time sports a typical high quality copy Hublot characteristic: rather than being displayed on the flange as is customary, it is located on a fixed ring in the centre, with the day/night separation running vertically instead of horizontally. While making absolutely no difference in technical or functional terms, this choice is far from common when it comes to the display, thus making the Big Bang Unico GMT that bit more unusual. The ring itself is skeletonised, giving it a lively, contemporary and distinctive appearance that’s also typical of Hublot’s visual style.
On the technical side, the GMT function is not integrated into the movement: instead, UK cheap super clone Hublot simply swapped out its usual chronograph module for a GMT module developed on the basis of the in-house flyback chronograph HUB 1240 calibre. This resulted in a new movement reference, the HUB 1251, but all the technical characteristics of the base movement are the same, including the 4Hz frequency and the 72-hour power reserve.
The Swiss replica Hublot Big Bang Unico GMT was originally released in two versions, both with a diameter of 45 millimetres and a choice between a case and bezel in titanium or carbon fibre; a third version with a King Gold case and blue ceramic bezel followed in 2018. And that was it: one, two, three… gone. The Big Bang Unico GMT is thus a rare curiosity – and now a collector’s item.