The TAG Heuer Monaco Speed 12 debuts this weekend at the Formula 1 Louis Vuitton Grand Prix de Monaco with a new complication but not a chronograph.
was facing high expectations to bring some high-octane timekeeping to the track this year. Surprisingly, the brand meets the challenge not with a chronograph, but with an auto-inspired take on the jumping hour complication.
TheSpeed 12 combines race-track aesthetics with a new movement that collectors of Louis Vuitton might find familiar. The new watch debuts at thecompany La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, a complication movement workshop, to develop a race-track take on the Louis Vuittonmovement, first introduced in 2009. The Spin Time, you will remember, employs 12 rotating satellite cubes to tell the time, which Louis Vuitton went on to decorate in several colorful renditions over the years.
The mechanism is also often referred to as wandering minutes. With the new Monaco Speed 12, the rotating indexes don’t wander so much as race.
In a novel reinterpretation of the jumping hour complication, the automatic caliber TH84-00 powers 12 rotating piston-motif indexes on the dial that indicate the corresponding hour with every revolution of the central minute hand. Every time the minute hand completes a rotation, one piston returns to its initial stance, while the following one makes a precise 90-degree turn, unveiling the next hour.
The movement is openworked, with sapphire crystals front and back, so that the pistons seem to be operating in mid-air. The finishing is a sleek, in an all-business, industrial-looking color scheme. The bridge is decorated in a rhodium-plated racing stripe pattern that somewhat resembles the front grill of a car. The rotating hour pistons are sandblasted with three vertical satin-finished lines, with black lacquered engraved Arabic numerals.
At each corner, the pistons are separated by DLC-coated titanium arches at each corner. Remarkably, the titanium case is only 40 mm wide, which makes it wearable on and off the track. It comes on a black rubber strap with textile embossing and red hand-stitching. The Monaco Speed 12 is limited to 50 numbered pieces, priced at $87,000.
Carol Besler writes about luxury watches and jewelry for Robb Report, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Forbes, and others. She is a member of the Academy of the Grand Prix D'Horlogerie de Gèneve and…sign up‘Gus,’ One of the World’s Largest and Most Complete T. Rex Fossils, Could Fetch $30 Million at Auction
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