MB&F’s Gold & Sapphire Watches Recall Classic Automotive & Aviation Design
The nearly-$500,000 timepieces are truly extravagant examples of haute horology.
On a mission to craft a watch with automotive or aeronautic inspirations, most brands would start with a pre-existing model and add the marque’s logo on the dial in a cool color, or engrave a steering wheel motif on the caseback. But given that same mission, MB&F designed an entirely new model, channeling those transportation modes in the shape of the watch itself.
The Horological Machine No. 9, or HM9, was first introduced in 2018 as “a tribute to the extraordinary automotive and aeronautic designs of the 1940s and
50s.”
Founder Maximilian Büsser & his Friends behind the timepiece didn’t reveal exactly which cars or aircraft served as inspiration, but HM9’s bulbous shell definitely calls to mind the bubbly structures of the extremely covetable, ’50s-era Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, or even the fuel tanks from the ’40s-era Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, the United States’ first military jet.
More than the HM9’s shape, Büsser is proud of the HM9’s engine, which he describes as “the most beautiful movement we’ve created” since MB&F’s founding in 2005. It features twin balances operating simultaneously, the wheels of which are visible for wearers to see thanks to the watch’s skeletonized form.
To counter resonance, or “the mechanical phenomenon that describes linked oscillators in a state of mutual harmonic excitation” that accompanies twin balances, a planetary differential was developed through years of accrued knowledge and expertise.
The watches seen here are the latest versions of the “Sapphire Vision” Edition, featuring cases made of sapphire and fused to either 18K yellow gold or 18K white gold frames via a high-tech bonding technique involving a vacuum and high temperature. Thanks to these efforts, the HM9-SV is entirely resistant to 3ATM (30m) of water pressure.
Additionally, because sapphire is an extraordinarily hard material that’s difficult to machine in to complex shapes, the HM9-SV features less extreme angles when compared to the original HM9 and its tripartite case.
Priced from a staggering $490,000 per watch, the 2023 HM9-SV is limited to 10 examples—5 in yellow gold with a green CVD-coated engine, and 5 in white gold with a blue CVD-coated engine. Tap here to learn more.
