Richard Mille & Ferrari Create World’s Thinnest Watch
This $1.888 million RM UP-01 Ferrari costs more than an actual Ferrari.
Richard Mille took just over three months to shave hundredths of millimeters off the world’s-thinnest-watch record set by Bulgari, and Ferrari gets to share in the glory.
Stamped with a black Prancing Horse in honor of the luxe partnership, the RM UP-01 Ferrari measures just 1.75mm in depth, which is .05mm thinner than the previous record-holding Bulgari Octo Finissimo Ultra. According Hodinkee, RM and Audemars Piguet developed a bespoke movement for the restrictive application.
The entire Calibre RMUP-01 is assembled inside of the case, whereas the Bulgari uses the caseback as the movement’s baseplate component. Timekeeping features include hours, minutes, seconds, and a function switch actuated by a crown that allows users to select from winding and setting.
Thin as it may be, the Rm UP-01 Ferrari is durable—water resistance is rated to 10 meters, and the skeletonized movement plate can withstand 5,000 Gs of acceleration.
Hodinkee has more on the watch’s intricacies:
This [movement’s] development involved rethinking the escapement by building a titanium variable inertia balance wheel, which allowed for a reduction in thickness without losing any of the function and capability.
Where a traditional escapement contains a guard pin and safety roller to protect the lever from shock, according to RM, “The new patented ultra-flat escapement eliminates both parts and situates the banking function directly to the anchor fork. To do so, the fork itself was elongated and its horns modified.”
Richard Mille requisitely likened its barely-there bauble to Ferrari’s ethos, writing, “[Ferrari’s] models make no concessions and frequently contradict current trends to create new aesthetical codes. The RM UP-01 Ferrari bears witness to this partnership of the best know-how these two iconic brands have to offer in the combination of their ideas, understanding, respective developments and shared values.”
One of those shared values is exclusivity via price. And at $1.888 million, the RM UP-01 Ferrari is not only one of the most expensive new watches money can buy, but costlier than almost every ride in Ferrari’s fleet. And with only 150 pieces slated for limited production, the aftermarket value is poised to sky rocket as soon as the last one rolls off the assembly line.
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