When men in suits design a watch: IWC Pilot Performance Chrono

IWC just released the IWC Pilots watch performance Sports chronograph this is a non-limited new addition to the regular collection one of my first upscale watches was an IWC pilot Chrono specifically the petty pongs Chrono with an ETA movement it's no longer in my collection but I've always had a soft spot for the IWC pilot watches and the IWC pilot Chrono I had to talk about this release because it got me thinking about how good watches come to be and what differentiates a good watch from a well not so good watch and some thoughts about ID w c in general let's dive in the IWC Pilot's watch performance is very much similar to the regular Pilot's watch Chrono both the regular Chrono and the performance are 41 mm they both have 20 mm lug widths they both have almost identical Heights at 14.5 versus 14.7 mm that's basically no difference at all they have identical water resistance at 100 m they have the same 69 385 movement with 46 hours of power reserve and a frequency of 4 Herz both are well decorated for the price with coat deev and other machined bells and whistles that raise the movement above your standard brushed 3/4 plate and full- sizee bespoke rotor from a dial perspective you have practically the same design on the surface at least so a vertical three sub register layout large easily legible Arabic numerals day and date indicate at the 3:00 position in both models you get a display caseback and the classic IWC Chrono pushes but that is where the similarities more or less end the regular IWC Chrono with a metal bracelet costs just a smidge under $10,000 the new model costs $3,000 more on a bracelet that's not necessarily wholly unreasonable this is a titanium watch instead of Steel grade five titanium no less that is the most expensive material grade five is the hardest and most corrosion resistant of the titanium it is anti-allergenic so you do get some more I suppose you can call them technical features over the regular Pilot's Chrono the dial is also different if you've ever seen an IWC pilot Chron you'll know that the markers and numerals are all a bit one-dimensional the numerals are flat opting for a very tlsh aesthetic in keeping with the Pilot's watch Heritage the sub dials are inser and stepped down from the main dial the performance watch on the other hand has applied multi-dimensional numerals and markers the sub dials are also brazed and consist of two sectors a raised and sloped outer dial surrounding the flat inner dial the classic pilot is more subdued where the performance pops and screams out to be noticed then we have a compl completely reworked bracelet which is an adjusted version of the bracelet you'll find on the engineer this time with chamford or beveled Center links unlike the engineer then the beads of rice es classic pilot bracelet donates the easy adjustment system that you also find on the IWC pilot Mark 20 but was absent on the integrated engineer bracelet It's A wise choice from a usability perspective easy adjust is kind of a must have especially at this price point by now finally there's the biggest change the bezel on the performance you get a classic racing tack meter bezel in Black all these changes make for a watch that is distinctly different from the classic pilotes Chrono how do good watches come to be the end State I think is iteration I've been thinking about the life cycle of good watches iconic watches watches that have been around for ages and how they come into being there's a journey there that I find interesting and I've tried to wrap my head conceptually around how watch is like the nless the Submariner the Blan pan 50 thams came to be today if we start at the end the life cycle of a good watch ends to me at least in the state of Perpetual refinement the Submarina has been around for 70 years and today Rolex more or less doesn't change much many of us usually attribute this very limited amount of change to rolex's slow methodical Pace but have more and more been coming to the conclusion that is not entirely a function of rox's pace of innovation it's also a function of having a good Ultra popular watch that doesn't need a whole lot of fixing if it ain't broke don't fix it as it were the reason I say that this isn't a Rolex phenomenon is because all the icons to some extent go through this cycle the reverso is barely unchanged since its Inception the black Bay having a much shorter life than the reverse or the submarin but fundamentally the 41 has been through three iterations so far and the changes are relatively small same goes for the IWC pilot Mark 20 or the Omega speed master or the C Master 300M once you've got your watch to this point you're in a good place missteps can happen the C Master 300 for some H to a big a helium Escape valve in its current iteration not everybody liked the max cases of the Explorer 2 and so on but it's correctable for the watch brand over time you make a misstep you adjust a bit and get back on track with the next release that iterative position is I think the ideal business end state for a popular watch people like the look it's almost perennially popular and also it's much cheaper to make small iterative changes rather than coming up with something from scratch every 3 to 5 years but how do you get to that iterative state well fundamentally I think there's two ways route one unsurprisingly is to come up with a good design that people like route two is to reimagine a classic I'm going to focus mostly on the first route but I think it's relevant to briefly touch on route number two as well route two is what Seiko has been doing big time for a while primarily with the 62mas reimagining since 2017 Seiko have been a bit all over the place for some years but in 2017 they launched a reinterpretation of the 62 masas with one of many limited editions to come the sla017 the SLA 065 the more affordable spb 143 3 most recently the SJ 093 and also the latest releases of the new Marine Masters that oddly look very little like the Marine Masters I know but more like the 62 masas but that's a whole different video the point is they know they have something good in the back catalog they pull it out of storage and hope that it takes hold if it does produce more and move to that iterative SL refinement State as much as possible this is also partially the route that Brands like brightling and tag haer have been going after years for Brands like brightling with the 2000's Giants watches and gy Designs they are bringing out models with much more in common with designs of the past in the hope not only of repositioning the brand as a whole but hitting a seam of popularity with these new updated reimaginings then there's route number one invent or design a great watch that's a lot harder than it sounds the autom rpk code 1159 is a quintessential case study in this attempt AP has one watch the Royal Oak they feel it's a problem so they go to the drawing board and come up with the 1159 was that watch a hit no definitely not but that's not the point the point was the board of directors said to the designers give it your best shot the midc case has a resemblance to the bezel of the Royal Oak but in large part the 1159 looks like nothing else it's completely original in its second iteration the watch has gained a little bit more traction and positive recognition but this is the risk of going to the drawing board Gerald jenta with the naist the Royal o and engineer were also attempts at the drawing board in coming up with something special something new something that hopefully one day would become an icon we remember the ones that succeed by the biggest watch nodes most of us know nothing of the failures the key though I think in all the success stories is one thing and this is an assumption but I do think it holds true in car designs clothing watches whatever the success comes when you trust the designers when the design originates in the hands of the engineers and the artists you have the potential for huge success when starting essentially from scratch of course they can fail too but give those artists and Engineers the Reigns and you may just maybe get a hit do you know what I think hardly ever succeeds watches that are designed in a boardroom and this leads me to the IWC Pilot's performance the IWC Pilot's performance is a boardroom watch do I know this for a fact no why am I so confident that it's a boardroom watch what even is a boardroom watch well at its basis most fundamental level a bordom watch is a watch designed to appease a market segment first a trend first and a design second a watch where the money men set the direction for the design and the spec this isn't just in watches a boardroom PC game is filled to the brim with microtransactions and DLC a boardroom kitchen appliance is made of plastic and has a picture of a famous chef on the side the IWC pilot performance has all those Hallmarks a while back in the video about the tago Ker I noted that there were four kinds of Kronos they were the luxury design Kronos you know the P Kronos the Langan Zona rantes these watches are not Sports time as as such but rather classically designed marbles with a focus on hand finishing and complex movements then you have the classic Chronos these are the brightling top times the classic zeniths the shod mimas and the like then you have the instrument Chronos this is where you find the classic IWC pilot Chrono together with classic long jeans Chrono or a handh heart these Kronos serve a more tunish purpose and and fill a very specific niche of functional simple Kronos finally you have the sports Chrono the watch with the techim meter it's the Speedy it's the Daytona it's the chrona master Sport and now the IWC pilot performance the IWC Pilots watch has always been in this very tunish chrona category and with a number of changes most notably the bezel but not only this watch has been plucked out of its tool Chrono Vibe and moved into the sports Chrono Vibe together with the Daytona the speedy and the Chon Master Sport and so many others I say plucked out because it is a redesign of the pilot not a new design from the bottom why did they do that Sports Kronos are not typical IWC territory the reasoning is simple in a market where everybody wants a Daytona it's hard not to resist the urge to offer a sports Chrono of your own IWC saw this watch they saw the Daytona and they saw that people wanted a doona but couldn't get one so they said Zan we need one of those this could be all fine and well but the next thing that happens in the boardroom is that they get too involved in the design process the requirements on what kind of audience this watch needs to speak to gets nailed down but also almost always price points and cost targets get set the designers have to hit a number that means they can't start from a black piece of paper this is what has happened here with the IWC pilot performance the normal IWC bracelet is far too form and shiny we need a sport forward Vibe we don't want to spend money on designing a new bracelet so what do we do simple we take the bracelet from the recently released engineer make a couple of tweaks make the center links or the hlink bracelet more aggressively beveled and bang we've nailed down the bracelet but wait Sports Kronos have easy adjust mechanisms the engineer bracelet does not have that so we tack on the regular excellent mind you IWC clasp onto the engineer bracelet and you have sport for forward with the convenience levels you want the daytoner costs close to 14,000 though and the current IWC Pilots are less than 10K how do we find a way to justify getting it in or around 14,000 simple grade five Titanium or serot Anum depending on the model you pick it's the hot material and yes grade 5 has some characteristics that make it more solid in some instances than grade two it also has one more characteristic that the boardroom likes much like gold Platinum bronze and whatnot you can charge a markup which is greater than the added material cost and the added Machining costs you can raise the MSRP proportionately higher than the costs go up for including this material in the model then you have the tachy meter bezel insert you have to have that it has to be ceramic or some kind of black because that's all the rage the boardroom likes that but we're not done yet it also needs some added sporty credentials so we slap on an AMG logo on the back of some of the display case backs it adds to the MSRP at very little extra cost then the dial gets butched up we thin down some hands from a relatively restrained dial on the regular pilot Chronos you have something far more aggressive not necessarily bad but just so clearly butched up to be more manly more aggressive more in line with sports Chronos sensibilities if you've made it this far you might think he really doesn't like this watch and you would be wrong I think it looks good I'm looking forward to seeing it in the metal but my gut reaction is it's good but it's not a knock it out of the park stunner I vastly prefer the regular Chrono the P prance or the Lake Tahoe or the Mojave the classic IWC pilot is a favorite of mine but in the competition between this performance pilot and a day Turner and a Chrono Master sport or Speedy I'm never picking this pilot performance to me though the problem has nothing to do with Aesthetics or the look of the watch to me I can't get past the feeling that this is a boardroom watch I know what it feels like for an engineer or an artist to be boxed into design requirements that come from a boardroom wholly unfulfilling artistically you feel so irrelevant when you're building a ma to order watch you're likely feeling challenged in terms of your Artistic integrity to me when I look at it I see the engineer bracelet the Daytona esque bezel the compromised clasp which was never intended for the engineer bracelet I see the price markup for the grade five titanium that I do not need on a sports Chrono this is after all not a DI I see the ulish heritage of the IWC pilot lost in a butched up reinterpretation and it frustrates me it frustrates me because I have for a long time felt that IWC was on a roll they had a number of years back where they had lost their way back to the iteration cycle story I told you about I remember how IWC completely mismanaged the engineer for decades ptic and AP understood that they should make small iterative changes to their icons the engineer has been a hulking Behemoth it's been an an engineer in name only it's been all over the place IWC did this with some regularity with many models but in recent years they stopped they focused on that iteration cycle getting a smaller case for the pilot Chrono getting a smaller big pilot relaunching a more true to the original engineer overpriced yes but still back on track design-wise they've upgraded movements the bracelets are excellent and watches like the portuguesa and the IWC pilot Mark 20 are excellent right now and then they do this not staying true to their design ethos but instead falling back into one of their classic weaknesses making a market Centric boardroom watch that's a shame will there be people out there that will like this watch of course is it a bad watch no not at all it's not to my personal tastes but it's fine but it is to me a boardroom watch and that affects my opinion of it a watch that departs from what IWC is best at in a hunt for a certain Market demographic that very r turns out to be a success for me I'm sticking with the regular IWC pilot Chrono and IWC would do well to do so too at least I think so what do you think let me know in the comments like subscribe cheers

Channel: This Watch, That Watch

Views: 13,210

Keywords: IWC, IWC pilot, IWC pilot Chrono, IWC Pilot performance, IWC Chrono, IWC watch

Id: ZZ81hd7q7dg

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 16 2023