If your plan was to spend less money this year on watches, you might want to skip this article. Most mechanical dive watches are priced under $10,000 (even though the iconic Rolex Deepsea, Sea-Dweller, and Submariner watches, as well as many Blancpain Fifty Fathoms models, might go for a bit more nowadays), but there are several types of fascinating dive watches that go way beyond that.
IWC luxury watch brand dedicates the 2016 edition of the SIHH to its Pilot’s Watches collection and presents in preview two vintage references directly inspired by the original piece of 1940, the Pilot’s Watch 52-calibre T.S.C. Largest wristwatch created by the manufacture of Schaffhausen, this model reborn this year through the Big Pilot’s Heritage Watch 55, wich has the same impressive diameter of 55 mm as the 1940’s edition and the Big Pilot’s Heritage Watch 48, “smallest” but just as deliciously vintage.
Things could be worse: a sunny summer day, a speedy convertible and a cool IWC watch. The car is the Mercedes SLS AMG Roadster. The watch is also an AMG, of sorts: the Ingenieur Automatic AMG Black Series Ceramic, introduced in 2013 in honor of IWC’s sponsorship of the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 team. It seems fitting that we test the AMG watch while test driving an AMG car, so here we are at AMG headquarters in Affalterbach, Germany, ready to take car and watch for a spin.
IWC marks its fourth year as “Official Festival Time Partner” of the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival in 2016. As in all three previous years of the partnership, the Schaffhausen-based watch brand is releasing a limited-edition watch as a tribute to the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI). This year’s timepiece, officially unveiled this week at the annual “For the Love of Cinema” gala in New York, is a special edition of the IWC Portugieser Annual Calendar, first launched at SIHH 2015.
The IWC name is practically synonymous with pilots’ watches. The company has been manufacturing them since 1936. The best-known, the Mark 11, went into production in 1948 and continued until 1981, ultimately achieving cult status among collectors.
Our first featured watch is the latest in the Mark line – the IWC Pilot’s Watch Mark XVII. Measuring 41 mm in diameter and priced at $4,900, this watch is comfortable on the wrist and the wallet. The date window presents a vertical display, similar to instruments found in aircraft cockpits. To keep the price accessible, the movement is the IWC 30110, which is produced by a third-party manufacturer to IWC specifications. A soft-iron inner case protects the movement from magnetism.
