The world leader in luxury sports watches and chronographs since 1860, it maintains this preeminence by ceaselessly reinventing itself, and, in the process, changing the world of watchmaking - revolutionizing what watches and chronographs can do, how they work, and the way they look. TAG Heuer in History: Pioneer of Swiss watchmaking since 1860įor 150 years, TAG Heuer has challenged traditions, defied rules, and set major Swiss watchmaking milestones. This belt-driven wonderment, first unveiled as a Concept Watch at BaselWorld in 2004, is now industrialized and entirely hand manufactured in TAG Heuer La Chaux-de-Fonds workshop in an exclusive luxury edition of only 150 pieces in platinum. The first advanced integrated mechanical movement of the third millennium - and probably the 21st century's first major contribution to watchmaking innovation - the TAG Heuer Monaco V4 represents a complete break with tradition and the audacious next step in mechanical movement engineering. It looks better than someone desperately trying to style it.READ MORE: Questions & Answers to Jean-Christophe BABIN, President and CEO of TAG Heuer, about the Monaco V4īest Design at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève, Wallpaper Magazine's "Watch of the Year", Popular Science's "Best of What's New".īut as a commercial reality? They said it couldn't be done… Because it’s so truthful and so honest it often looks very good. It’s just the result of efficiency and innovation. “Aesthetically, they’re stunning objects,” he says, “but they’re not created to be stunning. In that way, Behling believes the watch further parallels high-performance race-cars, since those cars are often beautiful vehicles, but their beauty is derived from a design centered only on performance. The configuration simply produced the greatest mechanical efficiency. “It was more interesting than current movements of the time that were all flat.”Įven though the V4’s barrel configuration echoes that of automotive cylinders, Behling acknowledges that he didn’t purposely try to emulate that aspect of automobile engineering. “The engineering package that came out of it more or less had that shape, so we celebrated it because it was cool,” Behling says. To make those barrels fit within the movement, the prototypist-Ruchonnet-had to place them in the shape of a V, a design element that parallels cylinder configurations in car engines. With the intention of creating a movement with a lot of power, Behling increased the number of barrels in the design, going from the standard one to four. It found new ways to express performance and capture imagination.” The automotive industry found that it couldn’t afford to be stuck in a sentimental bubble. They feel like everything was better in the olden times that watch movements and old engines are better left untouched. “People are sentimental,” says Behling, “and there’s a trap that many people fall into with mechanics. Much of the credit for this, however, goes to Christoph Behling, TAG Heuer’s longtime design collaborator, who contributed a great deal to the basic design of the piece and clearly understands the emotional weight of its connections. Most people assume it was the prototypist, Jean-François Ruchonnet, who authored the movement’s ties to automotive engine design. Despite the fact that it had to be painstakingly reengineered in the early 2000s, it was nevertheless one of the company’s most striking and ambitious designs. Many watch aficionados are familiar with the tale of TAG Heuer’s Monaco V4, the belt-driven concept watch.
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