I would welcome a return to the "form follows function" ethos that spawned the original Carrera.

The same was true of cars at the time, but legislation, safety, the relentless pace of development and changes in the availability of resources have all changed that - at the same time tastes have changed too. Anyone know the difference between the dry weight of a 901 and a 997 Gen II Porsche 911? I suspect it's fairly substantial.

Watches have some similar design drivers - reliability, cost of manufacture, cost to purchase - but changes in taste probably have a proportionally higher impact than in cars. Take the trend for larger watches - I never bought into that myself; by the same token, I don't own a big SUV. "Bigger is better" seemed to be a valid ethos for lots of consumer goods for a number of years.

I think we've been starting to some changes in that for a little while now. I don't think any reaction will be extreme enough to be described as a backlash (outside of the more excitable media), but if we imagine a spectrum from austere to exotic, I think we will see more of a skew towards the austere. As that applies to watches and for my tastes, that's a good thing... but then it hardly matters as I still plan to be collecting vintage anyway!