Model family · Rolex
Explorer II
10 references33 variants1971–2011
Rolex’s 24-hour-hand Explorer, launched in 1971 alongside (not replacing) the Explorer for cave explorers who needed to tell day from night underground. A fixed steel bezel engraved with a 24-hour scale is common to every reference. Covers the 1655, the 16550 and the 16570.
Family timeline
All recorded years
19702020
10 references in production order. Overlapping bars show overlapping recorded dates.
19701983199520082020
Dates are those recorded in the catalog. Faint bars mark approximate dates; a dashed point marks a single known endpoint. Undated references remain visible. Chronological order does not establish a predecessor or successor relationship.