The Breitling Watch Blog

While most automobile brands that associate themselves with watch brands tend to be exclusive in their partnerships, Mercedes seems to suprise with every new watch venture they embark on. Some of the brands that Mercedes has associated themselves with: IWC, Graham, Tag Heuer, Fabien Cacheux, Ulysse Nardin, and their own Brand created with Tourneau. There are very possibly others that I have missed too!

Most recently is the addition of Graham to the mix to celebrate the Mercedes GP Petronas Formula 1 Team. The Mercedes watch they introduced is kind of ugly in my opinion. Designed more in the style of Graham than Mercedes, and features lots of discord with the mix of design elements making a watch that is overall not too tasteful.

While Mercedes has chosen to associate themselves with so many brands, they have for the most part made tasteful watches. However, unlike Ferrari by Panerai and Breitling for Bentley, the watches have very little association with each other.

Personally, I think the most successful and tasteful Automobile and Watch team-ups would be Breitling for Bentley and Jaeger LeCoultre and Aston Martin. The most Epic Fail Automobile Watch brand would be Tonino Lamborghini. Why would you license your brand out to a company that cannot market your product properly? Didn’t the 80’s and 90’s teach companies anything about licensing your brand – now we see Tonino Lamborghini products fill the shelves in discount stores and ebay.

Here is a gallery of some of the Mercedes collaboration watches out there:

Woo! I love this new Portuguese from IWC.

Beautiful thicker 45.5mm Case, with 14.5mm Thickness. Sapphire Crystals front and back, with a 60m Water Resistance. The sapphire back gives a beautiful view of the IWC Caliber 89360 with pellaton winding system, and finally a Date on the Portuguese! Only thing I’m not sure about is the Rubber strap, red second hand and Yacht Club written on the dial.

The IWC caliber 89360 is designed completely in-house with 40 jewels and a 68 hour power reserve. The Caliber 89360 puts the hours and seconds counters for the chronograph on a single subdial at 12 o’clock for easier reading. Date is at 3 o’clock

IWC has released their newly re-designed Aquatimer in a solid Rose Gold version, and it looks stunning. While not a fan of the new Steel Aquatimer, I really like this rose gold offering, with their in house IWC Caliber 89360 movement. This is the superb movement used in the Da Vinci Chronograph which features IWC’s signature Pelaton Winding system, and Chronograph hour and minute counters both on the subdial at 12 o’clock. Chronograph second counter is central, and second dial for the time is located at 6 o’clock.

Beautiful display back shows off the nicely finished movement and pelaton winding system. The watch measures a healthy 44mm in diameter and 15.5mm thickness.

IWC opened the doors to it’s new Flagship Boutique in Hong Kong on June 1st, 2009. This state of the art showroom is absolutely amazing inside. And they say the luxury goods industry is in turmoil… 😉

The Boutique will carry all the standard collections as well as some limited exclusive timepieces available only at the boutique. This is IWC’s first Flagship store, and joins many other prestigious luxury brands at 1881 Heritage, the location of the boutique. The store extends to over 200 metres, which is around 2000 square feet.

Finally got a video review of my IWC AMG Ingenieur up. This is my favourite travel and all-purpose watch. It does not draw any attention and looks great. The only complaint that I have is possibly that it looks too sporty with a suit and the dark grey of the titanium is a bit clashing with most other types of jewelry such as wedding rings, etc. However, it does make an excellent sports watch and while being made of titanium, still weighs a big more than most Titanium watches that I’ve owned.