Mercedes-Benz Turns 140, and IWC Answered with Its Smartest Perpetual Calendar

Perpetual calendars have a dirty little secret that a lot of people are unaware of. They’ll track leap years for decades without any issue, but if you happen to overshoot the date while setting one, you might find yourself taking a trip back to the watchmaker. It’s one of those rare complication that will punish its owner for ever touching it.

So when IWC needed a proper gift for Mercedes-Benz’s 140th anniversary, the brand reached for the one movement built to end that anxiety once and for all. Say hello to the new Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar ProSet 140 Years Mercedes-Benz.

Finally, a Perpetual Calendar That Forgives You

IWC has been in the perpetual calendar game since 1985, when legendary watchmaker Kurt Klaus devised the mechanism that put Schaffhausen on the complication map. The ProSet module, which debuted this past April at Watches and Wonders, is the first ground-up reimagining of that formula in decades.

The pitch is pretty simple. Every calendar indication adjusts forward and, for the first time ever, backward through a single crown position. There’s no hidden pushers, and no setting sequences to worry about here.

Behind that simplicity sits an all-gear module protected by four patents. And the components are so intricate that IWC manufactures them via LIGA, a complex microstructuring process borrowed from the semiconductor world.

A Badge Older Than Your Grandfather’s Benz

Flip the watch over and the sapphire caseback reveals some nice collab details. Printed over the caliber 82665 is the very first Mercedes-Benz logo, which was created all the way back in 1926 when Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft merged with Benz & Cie., and pairs the Benz laurel wreath with Daimler’s three-pointed star.

And in case you missed it, that means the emblem turns 100 this year (yeah, the anniversary layers run deep here).

Dressed for the S-Class Crowd

The watch itself skips much of the racing cosplay we see in other collabs in the space. Instead, the 42mm brushed and polished steel case frames a black dial with solid gold appliqués and gold-plated hands.

There a total of our subdials across the main dial, and they’re responsible for handle the day, date, month, and IWC’s Double Moon display. Which, for reference, is stated to drift just one day every 1,040 years.

A four-digit year window also sits between 7 and 8 o’clock. Powering the watch is the caliber 82665, which pairs a silicon hairspring with ceramic-reinforced Pellaton winding for 60 hours of reserve.

Spec Sheet

Pricing & Availability

Limited to 140 pieces, one for every year since Carl Benz filed that fateful patent, the Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar ProSet 140 Years Mercedes-Benz is available now, priced at $47,200.

Recap

IWC Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar ProSet 140 Years Mercedes-Benz

IWC celebrates Mercedes-Benz’s 140th anniversary with a 140-piece Big Pilot packing its new crown-set ProSet perpetual calendar and a century-old Benz logo on the caseback.