Some partnerships in watchmaking feel like marketing exercises. This one doesn’t. IWC and Mercedes-Benz have been building the same story for over two decades — since Mercedes-AMG signed on in 2004, through the Official Engineering Partner role with Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 since 2013, all the way to a shared obsession with the G-Class. So when Mercedes-Benz turned 140 this year, under the banner “140 Years of Innovation,” IWC didn’t just slap a logo on a dial. It engineered something new.
A Calendar That Finally Makes Sense
The star of the show is the Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar ProSet 140 Years Mercedes-Benz (ref. IW329603), limited to 140 pieces — one for every year of the anniversary. What makes it genuinely newsworthy isn’t the anniversary tie-in, it’s the mechanism underneath: IWC’s new Perpetual Calendar ProSet, unveiled earlier this year at Watches and Wonders Geneva, is the brand’s first QP that adjusts forward and backward through a single crown position. No correctors, no juggling crown positions, no risk of damaging the movement mid-setting. It’s an entirely gear-driven, four-patent system built using LIGA microstructuring, and it turns one of watchmaking’s most feared complications into something you set like the time.
The Specs That Back It Up
Inside the 42mm steel case sits IWC’s manufacture Calibre 82665, running at 4Hz with 34 jewels, a nickel-phosphorus escapement, silicon hairspring, and a ceramic-reinforced Pellaton winding system delivering 60 hours of reserve. Four subdials handle the date, month, day and IWC’s Double Moon phase display, accurate to within a day every 1,040 years, with a four-digit year sitting between 7 and 8 o’clock. The black dial wears solid gold appliqués and gold-plated hands, while the sapphire caseback reveals a historic 1926 emblem marking the merger of Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie. It’s priced at EUR 40,900 incl. VAT, on a black rubber strap with IWC’s tool-free EasX-CHANGE system.
The Bigger Picture for IWC
This watch isn’t just a birthday card for a car brand — it’s IWC using a milestone moment to prove that its most technically demanding complication has moved forward. Expect the ProSet mechanism to trickle into more of the Big Pilot lineup, and expect the IWC-Mercedes relationship to keep producing watches that actually earn their crossover status.
