Now in its fifth year, the ongoing partnership between Swiss watch brand Richard Mille and luxury British supercar maker McLaren Automotive takes the form of the RM 40-01 Automatic Tourbillon McLaren Speedtail. Both watch and hypercar will be produced as an exclusive limited edition of 106.
Design
Covering 112 metres per second, the McLaren Speedtail, the third car in McLaren’s Ultimate Series, owes its eyewatering speed to 1,070 horsepower but also to its design. Based on a droplet shape, the most aerodynamically efficient shape found in nature, it enables the Speedtail to reach a top speed of 402kph/250mph.
Like the hypercar on which it is based, the RM 40-01 Automatic Tourbillon McLaren Speedtail mimics this droplet form with a case (41.80 x 48.25 x 14.15mm, in titanium and Carbon TPT® for lightness and resistance) that is wider at 12 o’clock than at 6 o’clock, with a further taper between the bezel and the caseback. Bezel indentations reference the bonnet openings on the Speedtail, while pushers recall the air outlets behind the front wheels. The orange line that runs from the 6 o’clock position onto the strap is a shoutout to the vertical stoplight in the Speedtail’s rear screen. Because “collaboration” also implies “adaptation”, Richard Mille’s casing department devoted 2,800 hours to perfecting the case’s lines for a seamless combination of both partners’ design cues.
Mechanism
Part of the watch’s protective coating, grade 5 titanium is also the material of choice for the rotor core, baseplate, bridges and bridge screws. In a first for a Richard Mille in-house tourbillon, the CRMT4 calibre introduces a function selector, a power-reserve indication and a large date. A pusher at 4 o’clock switches between winding, neutral and time-setting, with the corresponding function shown in an aperture at 3 o’clock. Across from it, at 9 o’clock, is the power reserve of up to 50 hours when the movement is fully wound. The date, at 12 o’clock, is adjusted by a pusher located at 8 o’clock– rather than the more obvious 11 o’clock position – for visual balance. Mirroring the Speedtail’s powerful engine, the RM 40-01 Automatic Tourbillon McLaren Speedtail beats at 28,800 vph.
The crossover between hypercar and hyper watch is not only visible on the outside; multiple references to McLaren are found on the inside of the watch as well. For example, several of the wheels are machined with the automaker’s logo, while the winding rotor in platinum and 5N red gold looks to the Speedtail’s bonnet. This new movement architecture took 8,600 hours of development, a large part of which went into finalizing details.
So, ready for life in the hyper fast lane?!
