What will it come out from the watch desiners if the word of “watch” become just a concept of “time indicator” without any concreate image or textbook constraints? Tag Heuer’s engineers and designers’ answer is: the Monaco V4.
A Complete Break With Tradition
Tag Heuer has been well-known for being the “Swiss Avant-Garde” since 1860. Over the past 150 years, Tag Heuer has set new benchmarks for luxury sports watches again and again. This year, the premiere of their stunning Monaco V4 has again pushed the luxury watchmaking beyond limits.
Monaco V4 is the world’s first belt-driven watch that has been put into commercial production. Its protoype, the Monaco V4 Concept watch, was unveiled in 2004 at BaselWorld.
Like a car engine, the fundamental mechanical factors in a watch are: transmission, friction and power.
Until the V4, the principal components of the modern watch system, regardless of their complications, were generally based on the mechnical movements that were developed during the 18th and 19th century. But Monaco V4 creates a completely different system with the existing principles of watchmaking, turning that heritage upside down and inside out.
Transmission
Traditionally, watch movement use gears for transmision. But in Monaco V4, these were replaced with a world patent: the belt-driven transmission system, which requires no extra gears to send motion from point to another, and is thus more efficient and easier to maintain.
Energy
Before Monaco V4, the oscillating mass of a watch is superimposed on the movement and moves in a rotational manner. Tag Heuer revolutionized this with another worldwide patent: the linear mass, which doesn’t move back and forth but up and down on a track and is mounted on the world’s smallest ball bearings.
The Origin of Monaco V4
Monaco V4 is designed to give homage to Tag Heuer’s 150th anniversary and its flagship series: Monaco. The original Monaco’s outsized, square face impacted the conventional watchmaking aesthetics of a whole generation. Thus Monaco V4 inherit its predecessors’ iconic square face to showcase TAG Heuer’s newest breakthrough in high-end luxury design.
The name V4 derives from the V-shaped platinum main plate on which the movement’s four spring barrels are mounted.
Back in 2004, the Monaco V4 was presented as a Concept Watch, which is he world’s first watch with belt drives, linear mass and ball bearings. That was the prototype of the present version. At that time, many industry insiders thought V4 would not be put into commercial production because of the complicated technology required to made the watch is still not mature.
To ensure the best quality and the greatest reliability, engineers and designers took almost 5 years to finally make the concep watch come ture as a commercial reality.It is not an easy task to entirely rethink the mechanical watch architecture and create a brand new thing.
Great improvements have been made on the prototype watch in terms of the reliability and quality control. Engineers have to develop special calculation, modeling and simulation tools. It is said, the techniques used in the design, prototyping and production of the V4 are comparable to those used to develop complex aerospace systems.
Availability
Such is Monaco V4. It belongs to watch enthusiasts and connoisseurs who enjoy strong and innovative designs as well as mechnical complication.
The exclusive luxury timepiece comes in a limited edition of only 150 pieces, retailing at about 100,000 CHF. The first 75 pieces of Monaco V4 will be available in November at the occasion of the Tag Heuer’s 150th anniversary and the other half is scheduled to be available in June 2010.
Tag Heuer Monaco Replica Watches available.