The Last of Its Kind: Rolex GMT-Master II 16710 'Pepsi' in 2002

Few references in the Rolex catalogue carry the weight of the GMT-Master II 16710. Produced from 1989 through to 2007, it represents the final chapter of the steel Pepsi GMT story before Rolex retired the red and blue bezel from stainless steel production entirely. A 2002 example sits at a particularly compelling point in that timeline: far enough into the production run to benefit from refined manufacture, yet still years before the discontinuation of the steel Pepsi configuration was fully understood for what it was. Today, the 16710 Pepsi is recognised as one of the most important sports watches of the modern era, a reference that bridges the analogue craftsmanship of the twentieth century with the collecting sensibility of the twenty-first.

A Tool Watch Born From Aviation

The story of the GMT-Master begins not in a watchmaker's atelier but aboard an aircraft. In the early 1950s, Pan American World Airways was expanding its transatlantic operations and opening routes that placed flight crews across multiple time zones within a single working day. The practical problem this created was straightforward: pilots and navigators needed a reliable means of tracking home time alongside local time simultaneously, without the complication of carrying a second watch or performing mental arithmetic at altitude. Rolex, already well established as a supplier of professional tool watches to aviation, military, and diving communities, recognised an opportunity to solve that problem mechanically.

The result was the original GMT-Master, introduced in 1954 as the reference 6542 and developed in direct collaboration with Pan Am. The 6542 introduced what would become one of the most recognisable complications in watchmaking: a bidirectional rotating bezel with a 24-hour graduated insert, paired with a fourth central hand that completed one revolution every 24 hours rather than every 12. By setting the GMT hand to a reference time zone and reading it against the bezel, the wearer could track a second time at a glance without disturbing the primary timekeeping display. It was a practical instrument conceived to solve a specific operational problem, and its visual identity followed directly from that function. The two-tone bezel insert, divided between day and night hours, gave the watch an immediately readable 24-hour reference and, incidentally, produced one of the most striking colour combinations in the Rolex catalogue.

From the 6542 to the 1675

Rolex developed the GMT-Master through the reference 1675, introduced in 1959 and produced until 1980. The 1675 retained the core function of the 6542 while introducing a crown-protecting Oyster case with shouldered lugs, a more robust and refined architecture that set the physical template for GMT-Masters to follow. During its two-decade production run, the 1675 appeared with a range of bezel configurations including the Pepsi in red and blue, the Gilt in black and gold, and the all-black variant, and it served a generation of pilots, navigators, and travellers as the standard-issue professional GMT. By the time it was retired, the GMT-Master had moved well beyond its original Pan Am brief and into the broader vocabulary of professional watchmaking.

The reference 16750 followed in 1980, introducing a sapphire crystal in place of the acrylic used on earlier references and updating the movement to the calibre 3075. It was a transitional reference, bridging the aesthetic of the 1675 with the more modern engineering that Rolex was applying across its professional line during that period, and it remained in production until 1988.

The GMT-Master II Generation

The GMT-Master II, introduced in 1983 with the reference 16760, represented a fundamental rethinking of the complication. On the original GMT-Master, setting the local time required adjusting the main hour hand, which was mechanically linked to the 24-hour GMT hand. Changing one meant changing the other. The 16760 resolved this with a redesigned movement that allowed the local hour hand to be set independently, advancing or retreating in one-hour increments while the GMT hand and the seconds continued to run uninterrupted. This distinction, captured in the 'II' designation, is the core functional difference between the two generations and the reason the GMT-Master II became the preferred professional specification.

The 16760 was a large watch by the standards of its era, earning the nickname 'Fat Lady' from its wider case profile and thicker dimensions, driven partly by the demands of the new movement architecture. It was a capable tool watch but not the most elegant expression of the GMT-Master form, and Rolex addressed this with the 16710, introduced in 1989 as the direct successor.

Refining the Formula

The 16710 returned the GMT-Master II to a case width more in keeping with the proportions of the earlier references. At 40 millimetres the watch wore with the authority of a professional instrument without the bulk of the 16760, and the combination of brushed and polished surfaces gave it a visual refinement that suited the reference's expanding role as both a working tool and a dress-adjacent sports watch. The Oyster bracelet, with its flat three-piece links and deployant clasp, remained the canonical pairing, though Rolex also offered the more formal Jubilee bracelet as an alternative configuration for those who preferred a softer wrist presence.

The Pepsi Configuration

The 16710 Pepsi takes its nickname from the colour combination of the bezel insert: red occupying the upper half, representing daytime hours from six in the morning to six in the evening on the 24-hour scale, and blue occupying the lower half for the corresponding night hours. The association with the Pepsi-Cola livery requires no defence, and the nickname has long since entered official collector parlance. What makes the configuration historically significant is its direct lineage back to the original 1954 reference. Of the three bezel configurations offered on the 16710 — the Pepsi in red and blue, the Batman in black and blue introduced later in the production run, and the all-black variant — the Pepsi is the one that connects the reference most explicitly to the watch that began the GMT-Master story. Wearing a 16710 Pepsi is, in a meaningful sense, wearing the same visual language that Pan Am pilots wore across the Atlantic half a century earlier.

Technical Specifications

Case and Bezel

A 2002 example of the 16710 Pepsi presents with a case measuring 40 millimetres in diameter, machined from 904L stainless steel, an austenitic alloy that Rolex adopted for its superior corrosion resistance and its capacity to hold a high polish over extended use. The case construction follows the Oyster architecture: a three-piece design comprising the middle case, the screwdown caseback, and the bezel assembly, with a screwdown winding crown providing water resistance rated to 100 metres. The combination of brushed flanks and polished bevels across the lugs gives the case its characteristic interplay of textures, functional in the sense that the brushed surfaces resist showing wear while the polished edges maintain visual definition.

The bezel is unidirectional, graduated across 24 hours rather than the 60-minute scale used on dive watches, and fitted with an aluminium insert in the Pepsi configuration. Aluminium inserts are the correct and period-appropriate specification for all 16710 production, predating the ceramic Cerachrom materials that would arrive with the next generation. The insert on a well-preserved 2002 example will carry the red and blue tones in good balance, though some natural migration of the red toward orange is a characteristic of aged aluminium and is rightly read as evidence of honest wear rather than a flaw.

Dial and Hands

The dial on a standard 2002 16710 is the matte black configuration, a surface that absorbs light without reflection and provides maximum legibility for the applied hour markers and text beneath the sapphire crystal. The hour markers are applied white gold batons, and the hands follow the Mercedes configuration: a distinctive three-spoke hand at the hour position that has been a feature of Rolex professional watches since its introduction in the 1950s. The GMT hand is a distinctive arrow-tipped fourth hand in red, providing immediate visual separation from the hour, minute, and seconds hands and allowing the 24-hour reference to be read at a glance against the bezel graduation.

By 2002, Rolex had transitioned fully from tritium to Swiss Super-LumiNova luminescent compound across its professional line, meaning the lume plots on the hour markers and hands of a 2002 16710 will present in cream or ivory tones rather than the warmer brown patina associated with tritium-filled examples from the 1980s and earlier. The dial text follows the standard three-line hierarchy established across the Oyster Professional range: 'ROLEX' in applied letters at twelve o'clock, 'OYSTER PERPETUAL DATE' in the second register, and 'GMT-MASTER II' completing the identification in the third line. The date aperture at three o'clock is magnified by a cyclops lens ground into the sapphire crystal directly above it, a detail that has been a consistent feature of the date-equipped Rolex range since the mid-1950s.

Movement

The movement powering the 16710 is the calibre 3185, a Rolex manufacture automatic developed from the calibre 3085 that preceded it in the 16760. The 3185 beats at 28,800 vibrations per hour, offers a nominal power reserve of approximately 50 hours from a fully wound state, and incorporates the independently adjustable hour hand mechanism that defines the GMT-Master II function. The local hour is set by pulling the crown to the first position and rotating it, advancing or retreating the hour hand in one-hour increments while the movement continues to run and the GMT hand maintains its reference time without interruption. The seconds hand does not stop during this adjustment, a detail that distinguishes the quick-set hour function from the more common quickset date operation found across the Oyster range.

The 3185 is housed behind a solid screwdown caseback rather than an exhibition back, consistent with Rolex's approach across the Oyster Professional line. The caseback is engraved with the Oyster case designation and carries the serial number that dates the watch to its production year. The decision to use a solid caseback reflects both the water resistance architecture of the Oyster case and Rolex's long-standing philosophy that a professional tool watch should present itself by what it does rather than what it reveals.

Final Thoughts

What makes the 16710 Pepsi a reference worth understanding carefully is its position as a genuine endpoint. When Rolex introduced the GMT-Master II 116710BLRO in 2013, it did so with a ceramic bezel insert, a new case architecture, and a Cerachrom material that eliminated the fading characteristics of aluminium permanently. The result was a technically superior watch in several measurable respects, but it was not a steel Pepsi in the tradition of the 6542, the 1675, the 16750, and the 16710. That particular combination of stainless steel case, aluminium bezel insert, and red-and-blue Pepsi configuration had been a continuous thread through the GMT-Master story from 1954 to 2007, and the 16710 is where that thread ends. A 2002 example represents that lineage at its most refined: a watch built to work, designed to last, and carrying the full weight of five decades of GMT history on the wrist.

• Case in excellent condition with little to no wear visible. Strong lugs with factory brushing still visible.
• Bracelet in great condition with light wear visible. Some stretch expected with age.

• Dial and hands are flawless