Customize your watch to pair with your Porsche

Porsche Design has unveiled a new Custom-Built Timepiece program based on the same production principles used in the manufacture of Porsche sports cars. With more than 1.5 million possible combinations, the configurator will be available on-site at participating Porsche dealerships and allows users to create a watch based on the Chronotimer Series 1 model to match his or her Porsche 911 car.

Collaborations between car makers and watch brands are aplenty but few can claim legitimacy like Porsche Design. The company was founded as a design studio by Ferdinand A. Porsche, the grandson of the legendary Ferdinand Porsche. The former was an accomplished designer too — he designed the first Porsche 911 in 1963, a car that would go on to become a motoring icon. This is the first time a Swiss watch company (Porsche Design’s timepiece division is based in Solothurn, Switzerland) is offering the concept of a fully customised serially produced watch, tailored to pair with a customer’s car.

The configurator can be used to tailor the watch, starting with the 42-mm titanium case, which can be made with either a glass-bead-blasted finish or a black PVD-coated one. The winding rotor of the watch’s engine, the automatic Caliber WERK 01.100, can be customised six ways. These include a version with the two-tone Porsche Crest at the centre and another that mimics the 911 Carrera’s wheel with its central gold badge. The colors on the rotor’s edge can be chosen to match those of the wheel edges on the owner’s car.

There are up to 300 different bracelet/ strap configurations in both titanium and leather. The titanium bracelets are either bead-blasted or black PVD-coated (to match the case) while the leather straps are made of the same hides used for Porsche car interiors and come in all 14 colours offered on the 911 model. There are also 19 different colours offered, in genuine Porsche yarn, for the contrast stitching.

An array of inlaid coloured rings, with minute markers in the style of Porsche’s classic speedometer, can be used to personalize the dial and to coordinate it with a car’s paint job or interior detailing. Two styles are available for the hands — the dressier, black “Essence” or the sporty, matte-white, red-tipped “Performance.” The bezel can be etched with either a traditional 60-minute scale or a tachymeter. The watch’s caseback and its special collectors’ box can be laser-engraved with a personalized inscription — if desired, in the same font or lettering used on the rear of the owner’s car.

The base price of a custom-built timepiece is $6,000 and ranges up to $12,500 depending on the options chosen and it will take Porsche Design 8-12 weeks to deliver the watch upon placement of the order. For the time being, the Custom-Built Timepieces program is being offered only in Germany (July 2020) and in the United States (September 2020).