By the time of last weekend’s public reveal of McLaren’s newest out-of-this-world supercar, the £2 million beast that is the W1, it was already sold out.
The carmaker is producing 399 versions of the car, a replacement for the decade-old P1 which comes with a twin-turbocharged V8 engine, plus a hybrid ‘E-module’, that rockets from 0-200 kph in 5.7 seconds – and they’re all spoken for. However, those who missed out can, theoretically, still get their UHNW hands on the accompanying watch from McLaren’s horological partner, Richard Mille – if they move just about as fast.
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Richard Mille is making 500 of the very funky RM 65-01 McLaren W1. Of these, 399 are reserved for car buyers, who will be able to claim the watch to go with the chassis number of their car, which leaves numbers 400-500 to be sold through its retail network around the world. Additionally, those picking up cars have until February to reserve a watch, after which any outstanding from the 399 will also be made available.
The model is a new version of Richard Mille’s most complex watch to date, the RM 65-01 split-seconds chronograph, priced at approximately £285,000 (320,000 Swiss Francs).
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Besides the brand’s customarily outré, ultra-engineered take on haute horlogerie – a split-seconds chronograph being considered among the pinnacle complications of fine watchmaking, rendered by RM with trademark high-tech verve – and lightweight carbon fibre casing, its standout feature is the bizarre in-out contouring of the bezel, informed by the aggressive aerodynamics of the car. Made (like much of the car) from lightweight carbon fibre, it’s also surrounded by a minutely thin – if eye-catching – rim of grade 5 titanium which, the brand’s engineers told me at the launch at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, was something of a challenge to produce. In places, it’s just 0.5 mm thick but still has a pitch-perfect brushed and bevelled finish, applied by hand.
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Richard Mille’s automotive credentials are pretty much second to none in the watch world, given it holds down partnerships with both McLaren and Ferrari at the same time. It inked a 10-year deal with McLaren back in 2016, during which time three partnership watches have appeared: a tourbillon split-seconds chronograph called the RM 50-03 F1 in 2017, the orange-striped RM 11-03 flyback chronograph in 2018 and, in 2021, the RM 40-01 Speedtail, whose tapering form was inspired by the car of the same name.
The fourth watch is as much fun as those long sold-out pieces. The case material is Carbon TPT, a ‘thin-ply’ take on carbon fibre made exclusively for Richard Mille by a Lausanne-based firm, NTPT, which otherwise makes bits of America’s Cup boats and satellites. The thin-ply element means hundreds of microscopically thin layers of prepreg tape, in which thousands of carbon filaments are all separated, aligned in a single direction and impregnated with epoxy resin, are stacked up, compressed and cured, giving the material its strange, striated look. The result is something fantastically light and very, very strong, much like the carbon fibre that’s used for the monocoque that forms the core of the W1.
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As a split-second chrono, the watch has two overlapping chronograph seconds hands, one of which can be stopped independently while the other continues to run: this is a traditional stopwatch feature used for timing multiple events (like laps) simultaneously and, thanks to its huge complexity, is something of a flagship ‘grand complication’ for top tier haute horlogerie brands.
Richard Mille’s take on it throws in more gadgety goodness besides. The high-frequency (5 Hz) escapement is designed for optimal timing accuracy. There’s a function selector pusher to switch between winding, setting and running, and a fourth pusher, in orange, which is used for the watch’s ‘rapid winding’ feature; pressing it a few times gets the watch running without the need to pull out and wind the crown. There’s also one of the brand’s most arcane inventions, a ‘variable geometry’ rotor that can effectively change its shape to adjust to the wearer’s activity levels.
