The Excalibur Spider Italdesign Edition

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The Excalibur Spider Italdesign Edition - Roger Dubuis
The new limited-edition Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Tourbillon Italdesign Edition signals a new partnership for the Geneva brand.

Maybe there is something in the water. Two of the most renowned Italian design houses specializing in automobile design are found less than 10 kilometres away from each other in the suburbs of Turin. One of them is Pininfarina, based in Cambiano, which has had a partnership with Bovet for six years. The other is Italdesign, the design house founded by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Aldo Mantovani but now owned by Lamborghini, which is based in the adjacent commune of Moncalieri. 

Like Pininfarina, Italdesign has for over half a century been a leading light in Italian design and a specialist in designing cars for other manufacturers. At the 2017 Geneva International Motorshow, however, Italdesign is presenting an ultra-limited production car of its own. Only five models will be produced, which means that there will not be enough of these 1.6 million dollar hypercars to go around for the eight future owners of the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Tourbillon that the high-end Geneva watch brand presented at the same time to announce its new partnership with Italdesign.

The Excalibur Spider Italdesign Edition

The new partnership between Roger Dubuis and Italdesign is part of the brand’s efforts to bring visionary engineers together with exceptional watchmakers. But in this case, just as there is little room for improvement on the new Italdesign hypercar (although buyers will have countless options for personalization available to them), there is little to add to the running gear or the bodywork of the Excalibur Spider Tourbillon. A chassis in multi-layer carbon fibre, ceramic bezel, titanium case back and titanium inner container mean that the case alone is already brimming with high-tech materials for a superlight watch. Inside, the manually-wound skeleton tourbillon movement, which offers a power reserve of 60 hours, completes the lightweight theme with its airy design.

The Excalibur Spider Italdesign Edition

The connection with Italdesign comes with a subtle integration of the red, white and green colours of the Italian flag. The tricolour itself can be seen on the dial flange between 10 and 11 o’clock, while the individual colours are used on the ceramic bezel (red) and the vulcanized rubber strap (green and red stitching on opposing edges with a double row of white stitching in the middle). Only 8 will be produced and they will be available exclusively from Roger Dubuis stores.

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