Pre SIHH 2015: Roger Dubuis Excalibur Automatic Skeleton – Specs and Price

When you think about Roger Dubuis, some marvelous features come to your mind. Together with a spectacular design, massive and easily recognizable, all the creations of the brand are imprinted with a superb finishing level. Every single watch produced by Roger Dubuis is stamped with the rigorous Geneva Seal (Poinçon de Genève). Another of these multiple features might be skeletonized movements. For the SIHH 2015, the brand introduced new automatic watch, the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Automatic Skeleton.

We’ve previously seen the amazing work of the manufacture. Flying tourbillon, double flying tourbillon, minute repeater, skeletonized watches (with certainly the craziest and thinnest bridges ever seen)… The list of complications used in Roger Dubuis timepieces is long and impressive. The design might be extreme and slightly showy, we have to admit: Roger Dubuis’ watchmakers are extremely skilled. We’ve experienced such a watch when having some review time with the Pulsion Skeleton Flying Tourbillon and we’ve been totally amazed by the openworked movement. So it is pleasure to see another watch sharing this same spirit, with a more reasonable price and some new interesting features.

One of the main issues with the actual skeleton watches of Roger Dubuis is the price. Not that this price is not justified but you’ll have to save a minimum of 130,000 / 150,000 euros to have such a watch on your wrist. On this new Roger Dubuis Excalibur Automatic Skeleton, the price is divided by nearly two. And that comes without any compromise on the quality.

Instead of a tourbillon, the new Excalibur Automatic Skeleton comes with a classical regulating organ. However, the finishing of all the parts remains exactly the same as, for example, the Pulsion Skeleton Flying Tourbillon. All the bridges are angled by hand, circular grained and plated in charcoal grey rhodium. As the rest the manufacture’s production, this watch is stamped with the Geneva Seal, guarantee of a handsome quality. The other novelty is a self-winding mechanism; located at 11 o’clock, it uses an openworked micro-rotor to wind the main spring. Something that must be quite spectacular to see in action!

The case measures 42mm and is made of 18K pink gold. It uses typical Roger Dubuis features, such as the notched bezel, the triple-lug construction and the star-shaped bridge to hold the barrel (located at 4:30). This new Roger Dubuis Excalibur Automatic Skeleton may look familiar but trained eyes will see a huge technical difference. That’s the strength of this new edition: bringing an amazing visual experience, without losing the brand’s spirit and quality level with a more reasonable movement and thus a lower price. If it is Roger Dubuis‘ vision of the entry level, that’s one we like here.

The Roger Dubuis Excalibur Automatic Skeleton will be officially presented at the 2015 edition of the SIHH and will be priced at $83,200 (approx. 70,000 euros).

For more details, please visit Roger Dubuis.