Watches and cars show many common grounds. They are both appreciated considering their style and performances, they both require an important amount of study to be deeply evaluated and understood, and their story ran into each other many times. Indeed, it is not rare that a watch-enthusiast is also interested in cars (and vice versa) and that it easily comes to the mind of aficionados the iconic pictures of Steve McQueen wearing his Gulf & Tag Heuer-signed racing suit and Tag Heuer Monaco on the wrist or the advertising of the Rolex Daytona (originally named Le Mans) showing the most famous racetracks.
The original connection between cars and watches traces back when timepieces were practical instruments designed to time the laps or measure the average speed with a tachymeter, but nowadays this kind of bond has been evolved. Jacob & Co., together with Bugatti, have brought the association between a watch and a car to the next level by creating a timepiece that is not practically linked with the automotive universe through a complication, like a chronograph for instance, but is deeply inspired by the design and technical elements of a car, in particular the Bugatti Chiron. The watch developed by Jacob & Co. and Bugatti is the Jacob & Co. Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon.
Starting from the case of the watch, the similarities with the car are remarkable and its lines clearly remind to the Bugatti’s design heritage: the carrure is reminiscent of the big “C-line” that hides the air intake of the Bugatti Chiron and the upper side of the watch towards the strap shows a miniature of the front bumper with the iconic radiator grill. On the wrist, the watch has surely got an important presence, coming in a 55x44mm size, and it can be made in sapphire, titanium or white gold. Despite the sapphire version is fully transparent and allows a 360° of the entire movement, also the metal versions can offer quite a lot of visibility through large openings made by sapphire crystal on top, bottom and sides of the watch.
The time is displayed through two decentralized hands (hours and minutes), but the dial is almost nonexistent and completely skeletonized, with the time-reading supported by two curved and symmetric supports that show 4 indexes each (2 to 5 and 7 to 10).
Then, on the lower side of the watch there are three crowns , reminding the triple exhaust setup of the Bugatti Chiron, each of them having a precise functionality: the left crown is used to set the time, the middle one can wind two different barrels (the movement’s one when turned clockwise and the automation’s one when turned counterclockwise) and the right crown is used as a pusher to activate the automation of the Bugatti Chiron W16 engine.
Looking inside the case, the 578-components, 51 jewel, manual winding in-house Caliber JCAM37 can be appreciated while working at a frequency of 3Hz and delivering 60 hours of power reserve. A tourbillion can’t miss within such a complex watch. Indeed, the tourbillon escapement is placed at twelve o’clock, it is inclined at thirty degrees and it is used as a further connection with the Bugatti Chiron design since it reminds the cooling fan of the W16 engine. Finally, a power reserve with the French flag colors is placed at 9 o’clock, evoking the French origins of Bugatti.
Despite the presence of the tourbillon, the rotating escapement is not the most striking complication the watch shows. Jacob & Co and Bugatti designers decided to integrate inside the caliber a miniaturized model of the iconic Bugatti’s W16 engine with 8 pistons by each side that literally dominates the watch. The engine block is crafted from a solid sapphire block to perfectly admire the automation while operating, the pistons are connected with a crankshaft that takes its energy from the second barrel of the movement and there are also a couple of turbos integrated in the baseplate that can be seen on the right side of the engine just below the hour markers, but without functional aims.
The caliber finds itself suspended by proper coil-over suspensions placed on four corners of the movement that work on the axis perpendicular to the baseplate to prevent the movement from shocks. This kind of solution would be the perfect idea for a vehicle, but since watches and cars are subject to forces acting in completely different directions, these suspensions are more an aesthetical exercise from Jacob & Co. with a limited technical scope rather than a perfect and optimized shock absorbing mechanism. The reasons behind this reasoning comes from the fact that a car is usually driven on a flat surface and hence the main forces acting on it come from gravity and aerodynamics, which are perpendicular to the ground, justifying the vertical positioning of the suspension. On the other hand, a watch is worn on the wrist in several positions, with the gravitational force that changes its influence on the movement. and shocks that can come from every direction. Therefore, such boundary conditions would suggest to design a suspension system that could suspend the movement in the three-dimensional space, as Richard Mille made with the RM 53-01 Pablo McDonough.
Nevertheless, the suspension system posed a tricky challenge to the watchmakers. Since the caliber is able to move on the vertical axis, also the crown stem has to accommodate such degree of freedom; so a technical trick coming from the automotive industry has been adopted. The crown stem features a special automotive-style jointed transversal link (cardan joint) that allows the movement to have a degree of freedom with respect to the crown, just like the drive shaft.
On the market there are several watches dedicated to a specific car or created by the cooperation between a watchmaking and automotive brands. For instance, Hublot and Ferrari created the MP-05 LaFerrari whose movement resembled the engine bay of the car and showed 11 barrels that give the watch an astonishing 50 days power reserve. However, the Jacob & Co Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon is the unique watch available on the market that is designed and inspired by a car to celebrate it and it exploits similar technical solutions. Moreover, even if it doesn’t set new records for accuracy, nor employs particularly effective shock resistance systems, it introduces a novel automation never seen before in the watch industry. It can be seen as a modern counterpart of the mechanically animated singing birds or dancers made in the nineteenth century. Reading the time takes a backseat since the true complication is given by the engine and the suspension that mimic the complexity of an extraordinary car in a much smaller size.
The Jacob & Co Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon is as exclusive as the car which it takes inspiration from, being limited to only 7 pieces for the sapphire version, 72 pieces in white gold and 126 for the titanium version. The completely transparent, no-paint version, is machined from a solid block of lab-grown synthetic sapphire which is the same as used in jewels but is kept pure of impurities to guarantee perfect vision of the movement from every angle. The difficulty in machining such material will set you back a price tag of $1.300.000, but if you can settle for the titanium version the price would go down to $300.000 or $380.000 for the white gold version.
