Roger Moore wears a Rolex GMT-Master

While the Seiko handled the gadget work, Bond still wore a proper Swiss watch in The Spy Who Loved Me. The Rolex GMT-Master ref. 1675 appears in several scenes alongside the 0674-5009, and its blue-and-red "Pepsi" bezel is one of the most recognizable color combinations in watchmaking. The GMT-Master was designed in 1954 for Pan Am pilots who needed to track two time zones simultaneously, a function that makes sense for a character who moves between London, Egypt, and a villain's underwater base within a single film.

Lewis Gilbert directed The Spy Who Loved Me as a spectacle, the Lotus Esprit that converts to a submarine, the villain's supertanker that swallows nuclear submarines, Barbara Bach as the KGB agent who is supposed to kill Bond but doesn't. The GMT-Master fits the film's scale better than the digital Seiko does. It is an analog watch for analog problems: knowing what time it is in two countries at once, diving to credible depths, and surviving a fight scene without shattering. The 1675 was Rolex's longest-running GMT reference, produced from 1959 to 1980, and by 1977 it was a mature design.

The Spy Who Loved Me sits at the transition point, one wrist wearing the past, the other wearing the future. The GMT-Master represents Bond's heritage as a British naval officer. The Seiko represents the franchise's commercial reality. Both were on screen in the same film, and the Seiko won.