Tag heuer monaco v48/17/2023 ![]() The case of latest Monaco V4 is made of Titanium Grade 5, a special alloy used in aircrafts, turbines and surgical implants. The Monaco´s V4 complex design, clearly visible through sapphire glass front and back, shows how truly evolved watchmaking can become. In my eyes one of the coolest watch ever built. With its square shape and automatic chronograph, the Monaco V4 recalls the original Heuer Monaco series. The barrels are angled at +/- 13 degrees, like the cylinders of a high-performance racing engine. Mounted on the world’s smallest ball bearings, the 12-gram tungsten ingot moves up and down between two pairs of V-shaped barrels (hence the name V4). A second patent was granted for the innovative linear mass, replacing the classic oscillating mass. The patented belt-driven transmission is a high-yield relay of five notched micro drive belts whose tension is controlled by two turnbuckles. It took the R&D team five years of relentless effort to turn the concept watch into a commercial reality. But TAG Heuer proved doubters like me wrong. To be honest I was among the critics of the project, because I thought this was only done to gain some extra attention during the Baselworld watch and jewelry show. After being presented just as concept watch at Baselworld almost no one believed that this “crazy” concept watch would ever become reality and also be sold. The TAG Heuer Monaco V4 was at the time an incredible achievement. The company finally changed from being more marketing driven to become a manufacturer of own movements. With the only dashes of colour coming from the movement’s jewels, the Monaco V4 avant-garde aesthetics have been turned up another notch in this iteration.The Monaco V4 started a new era at TAG Heuer. The faceted hands have also been coated with the material, and TAG Heuer has gone all out by applying anthracite grey SuperLuminova to them. As such, several components of the Monaco V4 Phantom have been coated in black titanium carbide, including the crown, main plate, wheels, indexes, and screws. Besides being an extremely hard material with a technical slant like the Monaco V4 Phantom, titanium carbide is also black, which matches the watch’s palette. The carbon fibres in the case, on the other hand, are randomly arranged and thus lack the regular “graining” seen in the bridges.Īpart from CMC, titanium carbide also features prominently in this watch. Despite being comprised of identical materials, the case and movement bridges look radically different TAG Heuer had aligned the carbon fibres in the bridges, and micro-blasted them to achieve their vertically brushed surfaces in matte black. The reinvented timepiece, the Monaco V4 Phantom, is now nearly entirely monochromic, beginning with a case and movement bridges of Carbon Matrix Composite (CMC). For Baselworld 2015, TAG Heuer has brought the Monaco V4 back… in black. In keeping with the theme, the watch also discarded the traditional oscillating weight in exchange for a linear weight that moves on a rail. ![]() The Monaco V4 introduced in 2004 was another revolutionary product, given its movement’s usage of belts rather than gears. 1916’s Micrograph, for example, could measure elapsed time to 1/100 th of a second, while the Mikrotimer Flying 1000 unveiled in 2011 beat it by a factor of 10 with a chronograph that was accurate to 1/1000 th of a second. True to its name of having and using Techniques d’Avant Garde, TAG Heuer has created several ground-breaking movements and watches throughout its history. ![]()
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