Messages: 2931 Location: Singapore
Registered: November 2003
some thoughts on the new Urwerk 202
Mon, 14 April 2008 09:21
I was at the Four Seasons Hotel and met up with Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei during the show.
The novelty for this year is the new automatic Urwerk 202.
Known as the "hammerhead", this watch is uber uber cool.
The watch features a variable winding mechanism...not the first to attempt this - I believe this was first shown in the Richard Mille RM005, with variable inertia rotors, but requires a watchmaker to open the watch to change from sport to sedantary. The DeBethune DB24 also feature this in 3 adjustable steps - H, M, L. But the Urwerk implementation, I think, is most elegant. Two turbines are connected directly to the rotor, and by either opening the vanes of the turbines or closing them, via a cool catch seen in the middle of the watch below, one is able to infinitely tweak the winding efficiency.
The super uber cool dial with rotating cubes, and spear-like retractable indicators. The cool-ness of the mechanism hides the fact that the entire display revolved, and the huge amount of power required to move the large mass - if I remember correctly, more than 100 times the weight of regular watch hands.
Notice Moonphase at 7 oçlock and power reserve at 5 oçlock.
Closeup of dial showing the finish, and great attention to detail.
The customary wrist shot:
I also noticed a platinum, which is black treated 201 on Martin's wrist. Martin also showed me a black treated 201 in SS...which is inspired by the finish on a harderned steel drill bit. Again uber cool.
The deployant buckle is without any catch, but closes and held close by a spring in the buckle, which is stable only totally open position of the deployant buclke or totally closed. Clever.
I leave you with a picture of Felix...in front of a poster of Steve McQueen, wearing an Urwerk...the entire suite had several pictures of old time movie stars wearing photoshopped in Urwerks.
I make no apologies for saying uber cool so many times in this short article. This watch is UBER COOL