Introducing the IWC Portuguese Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month Edition “75th Anniversary” (Try saying THAT three times, fast!)

While using the auspice of their 75th jubilee to look back, IWC are also using it to stretch-out a bit and do a few new things. The new IWC Portuguese Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month Edition “75th Anniversary” (hitherto fore denoted as the “IWC PPC”) takes the perpetual calendar function and lays it out plain and easy.

All of us here love complicated watches, you could say it is what we live for at Monochrome-Watches.com. Using the Portuguese as a starting-point, IWC present the Portuguese Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month Edition “75th Anniversary” (Ref. IW397201, IW397202 and IW397203) as an ultra-limited glimpse into their future.

Beginning with the classically oversized 45mm case and minimalist dial of the original Portugieser, IWC have chosen to elaborate the far beyond a utilitarian, navigational themed watch. The caliber 89801 automatic movement has quite a few tricks up its sleeves: Constant seconds are provided at 6 on the dial while the 12-hour and 60-minute totalizer sit jointly in one sub-dial at 12. Sitting between 9 and 10 is a display for date, while month sits on the opposing side of the dial between 2 and 3. The perpetual calendar function is completed by the leap-year window, just above the 30-second marker on the constant seconds sub-dial.

Unlike other IWC perpetual calendar watches that display the year as a 4-digit number, the IWC PPC could continuously run without intervention but for the fact that in the year 2100 a correction will need to be made as it will not adhere to standard leap-year conventions. I myself to see that as a failing of the watch, but rather an inconsistency with time itself. (Point to IWC!)

Yet for all of this complicated goodness – I have to confess that the nerd in me is most fascinated by the concept of redundant pawls used to translate the motion of the solid red gold rotor to the barrel. This insures the least amount of effort needed to fully wind the 68-hour power reserve of the watch.

I can’t overstate how striking the watch is; there are no flourishes of decoration – but it never looks austere or bland. It exudes tasteful elegance and will confer that elegance to the wearer… all 175 of the lucky buggers that plumb for one! Only 25 renderings will be made in platinum, with 75 more being prepared in red gold with black dial and a final 75 in red gold presented with a silver dial.