There are certain watches you can picture on someone before you even know they own one. Richard Rawlings wearing a 50mm Rolex capable of surviving 11,000 meters underwater feels like one of those combinations.

Near the end of his appearance on Watch Gang’s Off the Clock, the Gas Monkey Garage founder finally gets the question every guest on a watch podcast knows is coming: what’s on your wrist? Rawlings answers with a Rolex Deepsea Challenge and immediately describes it in exactly the way you’d expect from a guy who spends his days around 1,200-horsepower Ferraris, V12s and cars with questionable numbers of axles. He calls the watch “bigger and badder,” points out the titanium construction, and then casually jokes about its usefulness in a bar fight.

Very Richard Rawlings.

The Deepsea Challenge really is an absurd piece of engineering. Its 50mm case is made from Rolex’s RLX titanium and rated waterproof to 11,000 meters, or 36,090 feet. The domed sapphire crystal alone is 9.5mm thick. Inside is Rolex’s automatic calibre 3230 with approximately 70 hours of power reserve. This thing has specifications that sound less like a wristwatch and more like something Gas Monkey Garage would roll out from behind a welding curtain.

And somehow, that is only half the story.

A Rolex Built for the Bottom of the Ocean

You could spend an entire afternoon talking about the Deepsea Challenge’s engineering, which is exactly what we’re going to avoid doing. The important part is easier to understand: Rolex built this watch around one of the nastiest environments on Earth.

Its 11,000-meter depth rating puts it in the territory of the deepest reaches of the ocean. At those depths, water pressure is enormous, so simply making a normal dive watch thicker isn’t enough. Rolex uses its Ringlock system, an internal architecture built around a nitrogen-alloyed steel compression ring, a massive domed sapphire crystal and a titanium caseback. The idea is to manage those forces through the structure of the watch instead of asking one oversized chunk of metal to do everything. There is also a helium escape valve, the sort of specialized dive-watch hardware that almost nobody wearing one to dinner will ever need but makes perfect sense on a watch engineered with this particular mission in mind.

The funny part is that Rolex then had to figure out how to make all of that technology something a human being might willingly strap to an arm.

That is where titanium earns its place. The Deepsea Challenge uses RLX titanium for the case and bracelet, helping cut substantial weight compared with the steel experimental watch that inspired it. The result remains enormous (nobody is confusing a 50mm Deepsea Challenge with a discreet little vintage dress watch) but titanium keeps its physical size from automatically translating into equally ridiculous heft. Rolex itself describes the material as an important part of making such a large watch comfortable enough to wear. The research supplied for this article notes that the production model is roughly 30 percent lighter than the 2012 experimental version.

That distinction matters with Rawlings because he actually wears the thing. This isn’t a conversation about an experimental watch sitting under glass.

The Deepsea Challenge Started Somewhere Much Deeper

The lineage behind it goes back much further than the watch on Rawlings’ wrist. In 1960, Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh descended into the Mariana Trench aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste. Attached outside was an experimental Rolex Deep Sea Special, which made the trip to the Challenger Deep and returned functioning.

More than five decades later, filmmaker and explorer James Cameron made his solo descent into the Mariana Trench aboard the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER. Again, an experimental Rolex went along for the ride, strapped to the exterior of the submersible. The production Deepsea Challenge arrived in 2022, bringing the ideas developed through those expeditions into a watch people could actually own. Rolex even engraves the dates of the 1960 and 2012 dives on the caseback.

That history helps explain why the watch feels so extreme. Eleven thousand meters isn't there because Rolex believes its customers are planning a weekend swim to the Mariana Trench. The specification is the point. This is watchmaking used as an engineering exercise: how far can you push a mechanical wristwatch while still turning the result into something somebody can wear?

Apparently, somebody like Richard Rawlings.

The Part About Matching Watches to Cars Makes Perfect Sense

The most revealing watch comment in the episode actually comes a few minutes before Rawlings identifies the Rolex. While Chad and Rawlings are talking about their collections, the conversation drifts naturally from cars to watches. Rawlings says, “I know what watch I'm going to wear depending on what car I'm driving that day.”

Collectors will understand that immediately.

There usually comes a point when choosing a watch stops being entirely about specifications and starts becoming about mood. A vintage piece feels right with one outfit. A chunky diver works better on a weekend. Maybe the sports car gets the chronograph and the old truck gets something beaten up enough to belong there. None of this is technically necessary, which is exactly why collecting is fun.

For Rawlings, that connection feels especially natural because cars seem to work the same way. During the episode he talks about owning everything from older American cars to modern Ferraris, selling plenty of them, regretting a few sales and keeping certain machines because the story attached to them means more than the money. One Chevrolet, for example, was the first car Gas Monkey Garage built back in 2004; he says he sold and bought it back repeatedly during the early years of the company and now considers it one of the cars that will never leave.

That sounds suspiciously like watch collecting.

Why This Particular Rolex Fits

Plenty of Rolex models would be easier to wear. Almost all of them, actually.

But ease doesn't seem to be the organizing principle inside Gas Monkey Garage. During the same conversation, Rawlings talks about transforming a Ferrari Testarossa into a six-wheeled, four-rear-wheel-driven machine making around 1,200 horsepower. Earlier in his career, the shop became known for taking projects further than most people reasonably would and figuring out the details afterward.

Seen through that lens, the Deepsea Challenge suddenly makes a strange amount of sense. Rolex took the familiar dive-watch formula and chased the engineering requirement to an extreme conclusion: 50mm of titanium, a crystal nearly a centimeter thick and enough water resistance to reach the deepest part of the ocean. Rawlings built his career around asking what happens when you keep pushing an idea after most people would have called the project finished.

The watch and the cars don't need to match by color… they already speak the same language.

An Everyday Watch Doesn’t Have to Be Sensible

There’s also something refreshing about seeing a watch like the Deepsea Challenge treated casually. At its current U.S. list price of $29,100, it is a serious luxury purchase, and its engineering pedigree could easily turn the conversation into a lecture. Rolex currently lists reference 126067 at that price on its U.S. site.

Rawlings gives us a much more entertaining version. It is a huge Rolex. It is titanium. It can survive a depth that virtually no human will ever personally experience. And he wears it while standing around a garage talking about cars.

That may actually be the best reminder of what these machines are for. The specifications give collectors something to appreciate, the history gives the watch weight beyond its physical dimensions, and the owner gives it personality. Watches get more interesting once they leave the spec sheet and start becoming part of somebody's life.

And if you’re the kind of person who chooses the day’s watch based on which car gets the keys, we have to ask: what watch would you pair with your favorite car?