Montblanc is giving us a foretaste of the SIHH 2019 with four new Star Legacy models: two Nicolas Rieussec Chronographs – a Star Legacy Date Automatic and a Star Legacy Full Calendar – plus two TimeWalker chronographs.
Star Legacy Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph
At the 2018 SIHH Montblanc unveiled a reinterpretation of the Nicolas Rieussec monopusher chronograph that was originally introduced in 2008. This Star Legacy came with a new round 44.8 mm steel case with curved sides and a domed sapphire crystal, complete with guilloché silvered white dial, an off-centre hour register and rotating convex chronograph discs to enhance the 3D effect. As a follow-up for 2019 SIHH, Montblanc has released two new versions, in a choice of steel or rose gold with matching chronograph discs, paired with an anthracite dial and grey Sfumato alligator strap. Both these new aesthetic interpretations of the Star Legacy Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph are driven by the MB R200 calibre, a self-winding monopusher chronograph movement with column wheel, vertical clutch and two barrels that supply a 72-hour power reserve.
Star Legacy Date Automatic & Star Legacy Full Calendar
A new feature of both the Star Legacy Date Automatic and the Star Legacy Full Calendar is their 12 black Roman numerals. They replace the Arabic numerals of the versions unveiled last January in Geneva, which were a reference to Minerva pocket watches with their round cases and onion crowns. That detail aside, the watches are similar in many respects. The dial of the Date Automatic has a guilloché motif based on Montblanc’s star logo, which also features at the base of the second hand, and it has the same the leaf-shaped hour and minute hands and the minutes railroad track as the previous version. After the steel and rose gold versions with their anthracite or white silvered dials from 2018, this new Star Legacy Date Automatic comes only in steel with a white dial, but like its predecessors it is available in 39 and 42 mm diameters. The MB 24.01 automatic calibre supplies a power reserve of 42 hours, and the Sfumato strap gives a touch of casual elegance.
The pre-SIHH 2019 Full Calendar model follows the same aesthetic codes as the Star Legacy Date Automatic and, like the 2018 model, it comes in a 42 mm steel case with a white silvered dial. The automatic MB 29.12 calibre provides date, day, month and moon phase indications in addition to the time.
TimeWalker Chronograph
The two new TimeWalker chronographs feature a black “reverse panda” dial with silvered chapter ring and subdials, as a follow-up to the 2018 “panda” models. The 41 mm TimeWalker Chronograph Automatic has a small seconds dial at 9 o’clock and two vertically aligned chronograph counters at 12 and 6 o’clock, while the 43 mm TimeWalker Manufacture Chronograph has chronograph counters at 3 and 9 o’clock, and a small seconds register at 6 o’clock. In keeping with the TimeWalker collection’s motor racing aesthetic, which also owes a great deal to Minerva’s expertise in measuring instruments, both of these steel chronographs feature a tachymetric scale, precision minutes track, numerals and markers coated with Super-LumiNova and a red chrono seconds hand tipped with the Minerva arrow. The sportier 43 mm version, with its cutout lugs that recall the vents of classic cars, houses the self-winding MB 25.10 chronograph movement with column wheel, horizontal clutch and stop-seconds mechanism. The steering-wheel-shaped rotor is made of black rhodium-plated tungsten, and the movement is decorated with Geneva striping and circular graining. The 41 mm bicompax chronograph is driven by the self-winding MB 25.07 calibre, which supplies a 46-hour power reserve.
