Jacob & Co Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon

MPN: BU200.21.AH.AB.BBRUA

In 2019, Bugatti Automobiles and Jacob & Co. entered into a partnership to create unrivaled hypercar-inspired timepieces. Both firms share a unique focus on extreme luxury, mechanical performance and craft. Bugatti's cutting-edge ethos and designs inspired Jacob & Co.'s "Inspired by the Impossible" philosophy, a philosophy that has taken the brand to unprecedented levels of innovation and horological complication. This philosophy created a watch that looks, feels, operates and elates like a 300+ mph hypercar.

The exterior shape of the Bugatti Chiron exudes power and performance. Jacob & Co. took inspiration from this sculpture to create the case of the Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon. The case is a glass and metal volume whose structural elements echo the Bugatti Chiron's unique design in the signature horseshoe Bugatti grille, the quarter glass, the muscular bodywork and the haunting headlights. Jacob & Co. reinterpreted it all with a unique sense of design and exhilaration, all the way down to the movement, visible through seven sapphire panels.

The Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon follows one of Jacob & Co.'s design principles, which is not to use side crowns. Instead, it has three separate ones, located on the 6 o'clock flank of the case. The left crown sets the time on the central hour and minute dial. The center crown winds the movement clockwise, and the automaton counterclockwise. The right crown activates the W16 engine-block animation. Its power reserve is shaped like a fuel gauge, its tourbillon carriage like a radiator and its structure like exhaust pipes.

For the first time in watchmaking history, Jacob & Co. designed a movement that is built, works and looks like a motor engine. The Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon is built around a movement that defies traditional rules. Caliber JCAM37 has a unique architecture, inspired by Bugatti's engines. Its three-dimensional architecture and signature complications have no equivalent.

Jacob & Co. revisited the ancient tradition of automata with a W16 engine block animation. The large single block of transparent sapphire recreates the layout of the famed Bugatti W16 engine. At the press of a button, its 16 pistons fire up and down in their sapphire cylinders, driven by a single-block crankshaft. During the 15-second animation sequence, the Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon comes to life, featuring a miniature W-shaped, 16-cylinder engine-block automaton.

Its mounted four-coiled springs act as shock absorbers. A tubular structure surrounds the 30°-inclined one-minute flying tourbillon, like a protective frame. The Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon is not only a mechanical sculpture and piece of watchmaking art, it's a highly sophisticated system made of 578 individual components with a 60-hour power reserve. Such autonomy is an achievement at that level of high complication. A large barrel provides a steady stream of energy, whose level is indicated by a fuel gauge-type indicator.