autoblog.com: Over its 80 years of styling some of the world’s most beautiful automobiles, Pininfarina has earned its reputation for striking designs. But this one could be the most intricate, if not the most intriguing.
A collaboration with high-end Swiss watchmaker Bovet 1882, the Ottana Tourbillon by Pininfarina embraces some of the oldest and most complicated practices in watchcraft and blends them with thoroughly contemporary touches. The tourbillon movement, as any timepiece connoisseur will tell you, is a highly complex movement developed decades ago to counteract the effects of gravity on a watch’s accuracy.
Essentially, the entire movement rotates inside the case once per minute, obviating the need for a second hand in the process. To that, Bovet has added a large date indicator, power reserve meter (the watch can keep time for an impressive 80 hours sitting still) and a minute repeater. All told, the Calibre 16BA01 movement incorporates some 514 parts, most of them crafted from brass. They’re housed inside a jumbo 46mm case, available in either DLC-coated steel and titanium or titanium with white or rose gold.
The party trick? The case can be mounted on the strap either forwards or backwards, displaying the intricate movement through the skeletonized face or the caseback, which has an additional dial to display the time on the back. And apparently taking a cue from the dash-mountable watch, which Girard-Perregaux crafted for its Rolls-Royce Hyperion custom, Pininfarina’s own watch can be detached entirely from the Alcantara and calfskin leather strap and worn as a pocket watch or used as a desk clock. Impressive, but try not to like it too much. Only 80 examples will be made, each fetching around $300,000.
