Gorilla Drift Mercury Wandering Hours Review

Some people will talk about Gerald Genta and Jorg Hysek when mentioning their favorite watch designers, while their work is amazing, I have a different favorite designer.

During the 2000s Audemars Piguet released some of my favorite watches of all time. These watches were the limited edition Royal Oak Offshores that in my opinion put Audemars Piguet in a completely different league than any other watch being released at the time. With the limited edition Offshores, Audemars Piguet took watch design to new levels using extremely cutting edge materials like carbon and titanium.



Of all the limited edition Royal Oak Offshores released, one of the first is my favorite watch of all time, the Royal Oak Offshore Juan Pablo Montoya in titanium. The Montoya was done for Audemars Piguet's ambassador Colombian F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya. This watch was a milestone for Audemars Piguet on so many levels including the early use of carbon fiber, a display case back and brand new case design that would be the blueprint for how the entire Offshore collection would evolve years later.

With the ties to F1, the Montoya featured a carbon fiber bezel held in place with eight nuts that resembled what you would find on an F1 car. The Mega Tapisserie dial pattern was altered to resemble a waving checkered flag with the subdial hands being in the color of the Colombian flag. The crown guards and chronograph pushers were large and squared showing the design language that would be used on future Offshore models. The pushers also were crafted to resemble the ducts of an F1 car while the large crown was fashioned to look like a wheel nut. The exposed winding rotor was even made to look like an F1 car's clutch disk. The strap wasn't an afterthought either, being made in the design of the flame retardant suits the drivers wear.



If you look into the history of the Montoya one name will come up who lent some of his time to the design of the watch and that would be Richard Mille. Mille at the time was just getting his own brand off the ground which was partial owned by Audemars Piguet and in turn helped AP on a few projects. Now while Richard Mille has gone on to release some of the most amazing pieces we've ever seen in the watch world, that's not who I'm talking about.

The designer that I'm referring to is Octavio Garcia, who was the artistic director at Audemars Piguet from 2003 to 2015. Prior to working for Audemars Piguet, Octavio was a designer at Omega for four years working on the launch of the Aqua Terra collection as well as redesigning the Constellation and working on various Seamaster models. The Montoya was actually Octavio's first project at Audemars Piguet and to say that he knocked it out of the park would be an understatement. After nearly 20 years of having the Montoya as my grail timepiece I acquired one last year, basically practicing what I preach. Fun fact, I actually got married wearing the rose gold variant of the Montoya as well. I have to add that the years following his departure from Audemars Piguet have seen a lot of the daringness and fun being absent from the brand, I'm not sure how much influence Octavio had on that, but I'm sure it had a measurable effect.



As you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of Octavio Garcia's designs and so anything he does instantly has my attention. In 2016, Octavio took the big jump to start his own watch brand, Gorilla. Naturally given Octavio's time at Audemars Piguet you'd think his brand would be a high horology brand with prices to match, but Gorilla is actually a very accessible brand that still boasts hi-tech materials and complicated movements all wrapped up in advanced design. Throughout his career in the watch industry, Octavio has made contacts that allow him to create watches that are extremely advanced without his brand being part of a huge conglomerate and remaining a family own brand.

Gorilla actually sent us two watches to review, one being the Fastback Legacy in full carbon and the other being the Drift Mercury Wandering Hours. The Drift Mercury is the model we're going to be focusing on today. The Drift Mercury like many of Gorilla's watches is inspired by the automotive industry, in this case the 1940s and 50s Mercury "Lead Sled".



The Drift Mercury features a mostly squared forged carbon case with a polished black ceramic bezel. The defining feature of the watch is the wandering hours complication on the dial. Although the wandering hours complication has been around since the 1600s, its use is pretty sparse in the history of watches. It is honestly the first time I remember seeing a watch with this function in person.

When the Drift Mercury arrived this first thing I noticed was just how stunning the watch was. I'm very familiar with what Gorilla watches look like since I've seen tons of pictures of them on Instagram as well as Gorilla's website, but seeing them in person is something totally different. Being completely honest, the two watches Gorilla sent us were some of the most impressive watches I've seen in hand in a very long time, especially the Drift Mercury. The combination of the polished ceramic bezel and Deep Blue dial are just extraordinary. The mixture of the matte forged carbon case and grey tones of the titanium hardware also just complement each other perfectly. It's one of those rare times when you really need to see the watch in person to appreciate it. Funny most times I get super excited about a watch and then end up getting it in hand after looking at pictures for months and being let down, it was quite the opposite with the Drift Mercury.



The next thing I noticed is how large the Drift Mercury was. Being a fan of larger watches this is a huge plus. The Drift Mercury has a case diameter of 44 mm and a lug to lug length of 56.8 mm. Since the watch has an integrated design featuring no real lugs, the Drift Mercury actually fits the wrist well. On my 7.25 inch wrist with 55 mm flat area, the watch just fit my wrist perfectly. I'd say it wears smaller than an IWC Big Pilot or an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, making it suitable for slightly smaller wrists as well.

The final thing I noticed about the Drift Mercury from my initial time with the watch was just how well put together it was. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but the watch is reasonably affordable for what you're getting. Normally a watch offering everything the Drift Mercury offers would require the price to be 10 to 20 times more than this watch retails for. We'll get into the price of the Drift Mercury later on, but for a watch to be as accessible as this watch is price wise and offer all it does; corners would probably have had to be cut somewhere. To be honest I can't see any corner cutting here. The Drift Mercury is just as nice as anything from Audemars Piguet or Hublot when talking about their higher tech case offerings. Hats off to Octavio and Gorilla for being able to achieve this with a low four figure watch.



Now that I've gone over my initial reactions of the Gorilla Drift Mercury, let's now take a look at the watch's technical specifications. Like I mentioned earlier, the Drift Mercury has a case diameter of 44 mm and a lug to lug length of 56.8 mm. The watch is 15 mm thick and weighs in at 130 grams on our scale. The Drift Mercury is a large watch, so 130 grams really is pretty lightweight which is achieved by being crafted out of carbon, ceramic and titanium.

The Drift Mercury features a sapphire crystal which has a double anti-reflective coating. Under the crystal clear sapphire is the amazing super deep blue dial. The dial can appear anywhere from a deep blue to a brilliant light blue depending on the lighting and features a sunray pattern. Around the outside of the dial is a silver ring featuring a minutes track.



The star of the dial is naturally the anodized aluminum wandering hour discs. The dial consists of three discs each featuring four Arabic numerals that have a cross shape to them. The numbers on the discs as well as the minute track feature black Super-Luminova for low light time telling. The way you tell the time on the Drift Mercury is that each number on each disc has an arrow on it. As the number rotates and then lines up with a minute on the minute track, that is the current time. So let's say the "10" on the disc is pointing to the "20" on the minute track, the current time is 10:20. Only one number on a disc can point to a minute, so it's actually very easy to tell the time on a wandering hours display. The only time when two hours can point to two minute values is right at minutes "00" and "60". So you could have 10:00 and 9:60 displayed at the same time, but 9:60 is 10:00, so that doesn't read in-accurately.

Finalizing the dial is the Gorilla logo at 12 o'clock and "Swiss Made" text at 6 o'clock. There is also a center running seconds that has a red hand and anodized counter balance. Another interesting design cue on the dial is the exposed mounting points and screw which adds to the technical look of the dial.



The bezel is crafted out of polished black ceramic which gives the watch an extremely luxurious look to it. Typically I hate polished black ceramic like my wife's Hublot Big Bang All Black 41 and my old IWC Big Pilot Miramar. While my wife just loves her polished ceramic Big Bang, I can't stand all the smudges and fingerprints polished ceramic attracts. I hated it so much that I ended up selling my Big Pilot Miramar because of all the marks it would show while wearing it. For some unknown reason, maybe since the polished ceramic is only on the bezel, I didn't really notice any fingerprints or smudges on the ceramic. A huge plus about the ceramic is that for a high contact area like the bezel, the ceramic can pretty much take anything you throw at it without scratching. Some people are scared that ceramic can shatter, but I was told by IWC that broken ceramic is very rarely seen, giving one example when a case broke only after being thrown off of a 4 story building. The bezel is also affixed to the case via four exposed bolts which is a nice callback to the Royal Oak Offshore and especially the racing inspired Montoya.

Looking at the side of the case you can see that the forged carbon isn't the typical random pattern forged carbon we are used to, but more a matte black with horizontal lines running through it. You can also tell that the case has a four part construction consisting of the polished ceramic bezel top layer, followed by a titanium ring, then the forged carbon case and finally the titanium case back.



On the right hand side you have the large titanium crown guards and oversized crown. Each crown guard is crafted out of brushed titanium over forged carbon fixed to the case with an exposed bolt matching those on the bezel. The large crown is triangular shaped with extremely nice scalloping, making it very easy to get a good grip on. The layout and look of the crown guards really makes me think about the Montoya, which is a great thing!

The crown is screwed down which aids in the 100 meters of water resistance. Unscrewing the crown allows for manually winding in the initial position, while pulling the crown out to position one allows you to set the time. Setting the time actually lets you admire the wandering hour mechanism in action. As you advance the time all three discs start rotating, as each disc reaches 6 o'clock the upcoming hour rotates outwards to be the next current hour. From 6 o'clock to 7 o'clock the next hour disc completes its rotation. Pushing the crown back in causes no jump in minutes ensuring an accurate time setting. Also screwing in the crown is simple and requires no extra care to get the crown to catch and not cross thread.



Flipping the case over shows off the brushed titanium case back featuring a round sapphire crystal window displaying the movement. The Drift Mercury is limited to 50 pieces and the individual number of each watch is engraved in the case back. Although I know this would be impossible for the price point, I do wish that the movement could have been squared to fit the case. I mean even the new squared Patek Philippe Cubitus features a round movement and display back on a square watch and starts at well over ten times the price of the Drift Mercury.

Speaking about the movement, the Drift Mercury uses the ETA 2824-2 Swiss Made automatic movement as its base caliber. The movement beats at 28,800 vph (4 Hz) and has a 38 hour power reserve. On our timegrapher the movement averaged between +2 to +8 seconds in various positions, which is just outside of chronometer specs and extremely accurate. The movement is also fitted with a black Gorilla winding rotor visible through the display back. A huge plus about using the 2824-2 as a base caliber is that most local watchmakers would be able to service and repair the movement. The 2824-2 has been around for a long time and is a proven ultra reliable movement.



To achieve the wandering hours complication, Gorilla had renowned Swiss complication manufacture VAUCHER produce the G-5238 module. VAUCHER has produced movements for such high end brands as Parmigianai Fleurier, Hermes, Corum and Richard Mille, so the Drift Mercury is in great company.

The Drift Mercury comes on a black FKM black rubber strap featuring a textured Cordura insert. The strap is extremely supple and required zero break in to be comfortable. The strap is 32 mm wide where it meets the case and tapers down to 24 mm at the Gorilla branded titanium pin buckle. The pin holes on the strap are about 5 mm apart meaning you should be able to size the strap fairly close to perfect sizing. One note is that due to the integrated nature of the case, aftermarket straps will not work on the Drift Mercury. Gorilla does offer a host of straps for the watch including various colors and materials, so you aren't locked into the strap the watch comes with if you want to change up the look of the watch.



I had the Gorilla Drift Mercury Wandering Hours for a few weeks and I tried to wear it every opportunity I got. As I mentioned earlier, the watch just fits my wrist perfectly and is the exact lug to lug length I prefer. The wide rubber strap made sure the watch stayed put and never "wandered" around on my wrist. We're still having a random hot day here and there in Austin and on those days the watch handled the heat just fine. With only weighing 130 grams and coming on a thick strap, the Drift Mercury never seemed top heavy or gave me any wrist fatigue either.

With the mostly black aesthetic of the watch, the Drift Mercury fit in perfectly with my normal dress of black t-shirts, shorts and sneakers. I wore the Drift Mercury during all of my normal errands as well as going out to dinner and drinks and the watch was a great daily companion. Even having a non-traditional way of displaying the time, the watch was still easy to tell the time on, even at a glance like when driving.



Now the Drift Mercury did attract a lot of attention when wearing it out. I think the combination of the larger size, polished ceramic bezel and completely different dial layout just gets noticed. I had a few people ask about the watch and it was fun to tell them about Gorilla and also explain the background of Octavio. Since we just got through the huge hype explosion of the 2020s everyone had heard of Audemars Piguet, so it made the telling the story of the brand a bit easier. People really loved the design of the watch and materials used, but were really interested in the wandering hours display. Most were shocked when I told them the price of the watch saying they expected it to be a lot more expensive.

Speaking of price, the Gorilla Drift Mercury Wandering Hours retails for $3,849. For that price you are getting a watch crafted out of such advanced materials as forged carbon, titanium and ceramic. You also get a complication that is rarely seen in anything but the highest horology timepieces produced by one of the top movement manufactures in Switzerland. To top it all off the watch has been designed by one of the best watch designers in the industry. Besides running Gorilla, Octavio Garcia is also the head of the creative team at Gerlad Charles, which was the last brand established by Gerald Genta. I do feel that now we should take a look at some of the other watches that offer wandering hours like the Drift Mercury.



First up we have the Code 11.59 Starwheel from Octavio's old company Audemars Piguet. The Starwheel is crafted out of ceramic and white gold and is a more traditional round watch measuring 41 mm in case diameter. The Starwheel also features a blue dial, but in this situation it's crafted out of blue aventurine. The wandering hours display is also identical to that found on the Drift Mercury. The Starwheel comes with an in-house Audemars Piguet Calibre 4310 with a 70 hour power reserve. The Starwheel retails for multiples more than the Drift Mercy at $59,600.

Next up we have the Urwerk UR-210 Falcon Project which is crafted out of carbon thin ply (CTP) and measures 43.8 x 53.6 mm. The watch runs on a Urwerk UR-72.0 in-house movement with 48 hours of power reserve. The UR-210 just looks like a spaceship for the wrist and is much more untraditional than the Drift Mercury. Although the "hands" and display look extremely futuristic the basic wandering hours complication works just the same as the Drift Mercury and Starwheel, you even read the time the exact same way. The UR-210 retails much more than even the Starwheel at $162,000.



Finally we have the H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Flying Hours which is also a traditional round watch like the Starwheel crafted out of white gold and measuring 42 mm in case diameter. The Flying Hours runs on an in-house MHC 806 automatic movement and features 72 hours of power reserve. The Flying Hours uses a slightly different method of displaying the time as opposed to the other three watches, but the principle is still the same. The Moser Endeavour Flying Hours also retails for a lot more than the Drift Mercury at around $40,000.

As you can see from the three watches listed above, adding a wandering hours complication to a watch normally comes with an astronomical price tag. Besides getting an in-house caliber and some cases being crafted out of precious metal, you really aren't getting much more out of the Audemars Piguet, Urwerk or Moser function wise. Straps and buckles from those three brands might even surpass the price of the Drift Mercury which offers the same wandering hours function in a knockout of a package crafted out of advanced materials.



So in the end is the Gorilla Drift Mercury Wandering Hours for me? It is one million percent for me! If you have read my previous reviews, you know I prefer larger lightweight watches crafted out of high-tech materials. The Drift Mercury ticks all of those boxes and also happens to be from the brand run by my favorite watch designer. The one pause I would have had with the Drift Mercury is the squared off case, but after spending a long weekend on vacation with the Fastback Legacy with the same case shape I became very used to shape and how it fit my wrist.



The combination of the polished black ceramic bezel with the matte black forged carbon case separated by a band of titanium is just stunning. The little nods to the design of the Montoya like the oversized crown guards, exposed bolt heads and very stylized crown are just the cherry on top. The added wandering hours complication just pushes things to the next level. If I hadn't just spent thousands on a few watch repairs, I'm sure I'd be adding one to my collection. I am however on strict non-watch buying orders from my smarter half at the moment though…

Would I recommend the Drift Mercury to somebody looking for a non-traditional timepiece? I really would. The watches from Gorilla really need to be experienced in person to be appreciated. I was expecting to like the two models sent to me, but I didn't think I would end up liking them as much as I have. Normally when I open up a package containing a watch I'm a little let down, but when I opened up the two Gorilla watches I was genuinely blown away. The complete package of these watches honestly rival watches costing at least ten times their prices.



The Drift Mercury is an easy watch to live day to day life with and can also pretty much do anything you ask of it. The whole time sporting a complication that is rarely seen and when it is costs multiple times more than the Drift Mercury. I would also need to add that the watch is not a wallflower and will attract attention when worn, so be ready for that. In the end, I can only give this watch the highest of praises and it should be a timepiece you give serious consideration to if you remotely like the design and complication of the watch.

The Drift Mercury Wandering Hours was a tremendous introduction to Gorilla Watches for me. In the next few weeks I'll also be reviewing the Fastback Legacy in full carbon, so look out for that. I would really like to thank Octavio Garcia and Gorilla for sending us these two watches to review, they have been a blast so far!



For more information about the Drift Mercury please visit : Gorilla

Technical Specifications

Reference Number: Drift Mercury

Retail Price: $3,849

Case Size: 44 mm

Lug to Lug: 56.8 mm

Thickness: 15 mm

Weight: 130 Grams

Case Material: Forged Carbon

Bezel: Ceramic

Strap: Black FKM Rubber Strap with Titanium Pin Buckle

Movement: ETA 2824-2 Swiss Made Automatic Base Caliber With a Custom VAUCHER G-5238 Wandering Hours Module

Functions: Wandering Hours, Seconds

Power Reserve: 38 Hours

Water Resistance: 100 Meters