Press release
With its super lightness, extraordinary tensile strength, corrosion resistance and ability to withstand extreme temperatures, titanium has become an essential building material in many high-tech industries, including luxury car manufacture, aviation, aeronautics and medicine. High processing costs and demanding know-how keep its usage limited to top-end industries.
TAG Heuer is a pioneer in its use in watchmaking, having mastered its manufacturing challenges. The brand's Research & Development team has now developed a process enabling the use of Titanium Grade 5, a special alloy used in aircrafts, turbines and surgical implants, in the case construction of its most avant-garde timepiece to date, the Monaco V4 Titanium Ruthenium and Ceramic.
A stunning tribute to the Swiss brand's 150 years of pioneering innovation, the Monaco V4 Next Generation Titanium Ruthenium and Ceramic is available in an exclusive edition of 200 pieces. The case is more imposing (41mm instead of 39mm) and made of Titanium-Grade 5, with fine-brushed silicon nitride “ceramic” inserts. The inserts visually lighten the squared shape of the watch, and the newly angled planes of the beveled crystal give the watch a more fluid and contemporary profile.
Other titanium components are the hand-applied faceted indexes on the dial, the minute and hour hands, the small second hand at 4 o'clock, the thermo-lacquered crown at 3 o'clock, and the strap's folding buckle. The strap itself is in ultra-soft, large-scale alligator, with anthracite hand stitching and a rubberized leather lining.
The V4 movement's avant-garde architecture, visible through the timepiece's anti-reflective sapphire crystal front and back, remains unchanged (tungsten ingot linear mass, two pairs of barrels in series, set in parallel and linked by belts), but the finishes have been completely revisited, with a high-resistance black ruthenium coating on the back plate and the Côtes de Genève decorated bridges. The beautiful black juxtaposes superbly with the white “V4” and “TAG Heuer” engravings on the dial, and with the patented transmission and rewind white belts, now in high-contrast, high-tech white polymers exclusively developed for the new timepiece.
“The first patented belt-driven transmission in a watch movement”
Reference: WAW2080.FC6288
Movement
Automatic Belt-driven transmission watch
Tungstene ingot linear mass engraved “xxx/200”
2 pairs of barrels in series, set in parallel and linked by belts
Dial
7 fine-brushed bridges coated with black ruthenium with Côtes de Genève and “haute horlogerie” hand-finishings
Escapement and belt-driven transmission visible from the front
Faceted rhodium-plated minute and hour hands with white luminescent markers
Faceted rhodium-plated small second hand at 4 o'clock
White “V4” engraving
White TAG Heuer logo engraved at 10 o'clock
Case
Bi-material case : polished titanium and fine-brushed silicon nitride case
Case diameter : 41 mm
Beveled sapphire crystal glass with double-sided antireflective treatment to ensure the best readability
Titanium crown
Sapphire case back in 3 sections
Water resistance: 50 meters
Strap
Hand-sewn anthracite alligator strap with soft-touch effect
Titanium folding buckle engraved with V4 and with safety pushbuttons
Availability: from Oct 2011
Price: 65 000 CHF
