The new IWC Ingenieur Automatic 40
The IWC booth, if you can call something the depth and width of a multi-plane hanger and the height of a sailing ship a booth, is always a much-awaited event at the Geneva watch shows. And in case you think we are exaggerating, they have put airplanes in it, and sailing ships, and submarines and more. This year though was different. Rather than being towards the back and which you approach around a corner, this year’s booth was the first thing you saw walking down a long hall.
And the first thing you saw was a very large image of the new Ingenieur. In all its wonderfully sleek clean glory. It was quite refreshing. And very appropriate.
The Ingenieur has been around for quite a while. The first one in 1955 had the first automatic movement developed in Schaffhausen and also a soft-iron inner case for magnetic field protection. It was a technical milestone for IWC, and as such was given a name that meant “Engineer” in German and French.
In the 1970s, IWC Schaffhausen asked someone to kind of freshen it up. That someone was the horologically famous Gérald Genta. The renowned watch designer gave the watch, then named the Ingenieur SL as part of the brand’s steel luxury line. It was a boldly-designed new piece with a somewhat disruptive design, a rather unique dial design and an integrated bracelet. It went on to become a collector favorite.
The Ingenieur Automatic 40 launched in 2023 Watches And Wonders Geneva is a nod to the ingenuity, design direction and clean passion of that watch from the 1970s. And it was rather a hit in Geneva. Now it made a very nice clean design statement. A lot of work, thought and design went into the new piece that is, as IWC Schaffhausen CEO Chris Grainger-Herr said, “a versatile luxury sports watch or the 21st century.”
The new watch looks great in photos, but is a wonder in person and on the wrist. It wears wonderfully thanks to reworking details such as lug-to-lug distance and a curved casing ring even though it is aesthetically and spiritually similar to the original Ingenieur SL. It is a 40-mm case but is very flexible to wear on different wrist sizes.
Other nice improvements on the original are details like the functional polygonal bezel screws. The new watch uses the screws to secure the bezel, and they now all end up in the same position. The grid structure of the dial is distinctive and balances well with the sculpted case design. The whole watch exterior, from case to bezel to integrated bracelet, is finished with a combination of finishes that are either polished or satin-finished. Sleek and with a little sparkle but very subtle.
All that by the way comes in stainless steel with either black, silver-plated or aqua dial, or in titanium with a grey dial. The titanium looks wonderfully subtle, the stainless steel with silver-plated dial has a nice little tone look to it.
The watches are all powered by the IWC,manufactured 32111 calibre with an automatic pawl winding system and 120 hours of power reserve. This is protected still, as the Ingenieur always has been, from magnetic fields by a soft-iron inner case. It is also protected from water for up to 10 bar.
