Preowned IWC Watches

About IWC

The name Da Vinci has been inseparable from IWC since 1985 when the Schaffhausen-based brand chose to use the last name of the genius artist, inventor, and researcher Leonardo from Vinci (near Florence). They justifiably assumed that everyone would automatically associate the name of this watch line with the Renaissance's universal genius.

When the 'old' Da Vinci was presented on the first day of the Basel fair in 1985, those in charge of the Swiss German company were fairly sure that they would attract a good deal of attention. The Da Vinci was the horological sensation of the year. The special attraction of the watch - a chronograph with a perpetual calendar - was its four-digit display of the year. Displaying the first two digits on the dial demanded a great deal of additional technical effort, which Kurt Klaus - longtime head watchmaker at IWC - overcame with a few brilliant tricks. The highlight of the new Da Vinci collection is the chronograph outfitted with a newly constructed movement. Its automatic mechanism, manufacture Caliber 89360, has a power reserve of 68 hours. The tension necessary to wind the mainspring is provided by a progression fo the Pellaton winding system that has been in use again at IWC for a few years now. The double ratchet winding system functions with four clicks, two of which are always engaging the winding wheel to convey the energy of the rotor to the ratchet wheel with a back-and-forth motion. Its effectiveness was thus improved by about 30 percent, and the automatic mechanism's freewheeling is just about zero.

The chronograph, controlled by a classic column wheel, is of a flyback nature and is outiftted with a long sweep chronograph second hand that moves above a combination totalizer featuring a short hand (12 hours) and a longer one (60 minutes) on a common axis in the center of a small subsidiary dial underneath the 12 o'clock position. For the first time, this makes it possible to read the stopped time interval like an analogue display, which the schooled human eye can recognize at a glance.

The new line's case interprets the classic tonneau shape in a unique way, thus representing a revolutionary step for IWC. 'I think that we have waited too long with the Da Vinci - the product has not been seriously changed since 1985. That was a mistake. Today the intervals are much shorter - five, six years,' explains IWC head Georges Kern, who loves to speak of 'evolution' when talking about his watches, and must now admit that the new Da Vinci is not a small evolutionary step, but rather a giant leap that needed a giant portion of courage to complete.