Two Mechanical Legends, One Very Clever Calendar: IWC and Mercedes-Benz Mark 140 Years

There is a version of this story that is entirely about anniversaries and corporate partnerships. IWC and Mercedes-Benz have been working together for 22 years. Carl Benz filed the patent for the first automobile in 1886. One hundred and forty years later, IWC made a watch to mark the occasion, limited to exactly 140 pieces. That version of the story is fine. It is also the less interesting one.

The more interesting story is what IWC put inside the case.

A Perpetual Calendar You Can Actually Set

Anyone who has ever owned a traditional perpetual calendar has at some point experienced the particular dread of letting the power reserve run out. Not because the watch has stopped, that is fixable, but because correcting a perpetual calendar that has fallen behind by several days is one of watchmaking's more humbling experiences. Hidden correctors, multiple crown positions, a sequence that has to be followed in the right order, and the ever-present anxiety that going wrong means a trip to the service centre. It is a complication that rewards careful owners and punishes everyone else.

IWC introduced the ProSet mechanism at Watches and Wonders in April. The Big Pilot's Watch Perpetual Calendar ProSet 140 Years Mercedes-Benz brings the ProSet into a stainless steel case within the context of their longstanding partnership. The mechanism is built entirely from gears, protected by four patents, and manufactured using the LIGA process, an advanced microstructuring technology based on lithography and electroforming. because the geometries involved are too intricate for conventional production methods.

The practical result is straightforward: you can adjust the perpetual calendar forward and backward using a single position of the crown. No additional pushers. No complicated setting sequences. No risk of damaging the calendar by adjusting at the wrong moment. It adjusts the same way you set the time.

Kurt Klaus built IWC's first perpetual calendar in 1985 and it was considered a landmark achievement. The ProSet reimagines that mechanism from the ground up, and the engineering required to do so is, by any measure, a genuine departure.

The Watch Itself

The case is 42mm in brushed and polished stainless steel, 14.3mm thick, water resistant to 100 metres. The dial is black with solid gold appliqués and gold-plated hands, a white minute track, and four recessed subdials arranged with the date at three o'clock, month at six, day of the week at nine, and the double moon phase at twelve. The four-digit year display, a longstanding IWC hallmark, sits between seven and eight o'clock.

That double moon phase is worth a moment of attention. Thanks to a newly calculated reduction gear, the display will deviate by one day after 1,040 years. IWC's Double Moon ensures the phase is shown correctly for both the northern and southern hemispheres. It is the kind of detail that no one alive will ever need to correct, which is precisely the point.

The movement is the IWC-manufactured Calibre 82665, featuring a nickel-phosphorus LIGA escapement and a silicon hairspring. The bidirectional Pellaton automatic winding system is reinforced with ceramic components and delivers a 60-hour power reserve. Through the sapphire crystal caseback, the movement is visible alongside the first joint logo of Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie. from 1926, combining DMG's three-pointed star, which had been the company's emblem since 1909, with the laurel wreath from the Benz & Cie. badge. The watch ships on a black rubber strap with IWC's tool-free EasX-Change system for swapping it out.

The 140-piece limitation is not incidental. Each watch represents one year since Carl Benz filed his patent for the first automobile in 1886. It is a production number with genuine meaning rather than an arbitrary constraint designed to manufacture scarcity.

Two Companies Built Around the Same Instinct

The IWC and Mercedes-Benz partnership has been running since 2004, when the two brands connected around a shared interest in precision engineering and performance. It has produced Formula One team editions, G-Class inspired pieces, and a Big Pilot made with a ceramic matrix composite developed in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center. The Big Pilot's Watch Perpetual Calendar ProSet 140 Years Mercedes-Benz is the most technically significant release from the partnership to date, because for the first time the watch at the centre of the collaboration is genuinely advancing the complication it houses rather than dressing an existing movement in anniversary packaging.

That is, in the end, the most honest case for this watch. Strip away the 140-piece production run and the historic caseback logo and what remains is a perpetual calendar that does something traditional perpetual calendars cannot do: adjust in any direction, from a single crown position, without drama. For collectors who have wanted a perpetual calendar but quietly dreaded what happens when the power runs out, that is a genuinely meaningful development.

Technical specifications: 42mm x 14.3mm brushed and polished stainless steel case; Calibre 82665, automatic, 28,800 vph, Pellaton winding system with ceramic reinforcement, 60-hour power reserve, LIGA nickel-phosphorus escapement, silicon hairspring; perpetual calendar with ProSet bidirectional crown adjustment; double moon phase accurate to within one day per 1,040 years; four-digit year display; 100m water resistance; black rubber strap with EasX-Change system. Reference: IW329603. Limited to 140 pieces. Price: CHF 36,000 / EUR 40,900 / £32,100 (estimated MSRP based on regional retail listings, IWC has not published official pricing).

Official press release: press.iwc.com/iwc-celebrates-140-years-of-innovation-with-mercedes-benz-en/?utm_source=BarringtonWatchWinders