Richard Mille and Jean Todt share a strong friendship.
Todt is a central figure in the world of motor racing and has worked in motor sport management since ending his own career in rally driving in 1981. Under his aegis, Peugeot won four World Rally Championship titles and Ferrari 14 Formula One World Championship titles. And in 2009, he became the president of FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), the governing body of auto racing events.
Mille celebrated the 50th anniversary of Todt’s illustrious career, which began in 1966, at the third edition of the Chantilly Arts & Elegance Richard Mille in 2016, which emotionally reunited Todt with three of his former racing cars: the Scuderia F1, the Peugeot 205T16, and the 504 Rallye Groupe 4. He was one of the concourse’s judges at this edition.
Mille had already honored Todt in 2015 with the Tourbillon G-Sensor RM 036 (see Richard Mille At Harrods: Springtime In Summer), and now celebrates him again with three new editions of some of Mille’s best design work in Todt’s favorite blue color.
The first is the new RM 11-03 Flyback Chronograph in a blue-and-white quartz TPT case, a watch that was introduced at the above-mentioned edition of Chantilly Arts & Elegance Richard Mille.
When Mille’s first watches appeared on the market in 2001, he opened a new frontier in watch design: not only did the large tonneau-shaped case and radical movement design become his signature elements, but on the technical side his movements attracted immediate attention due to the use of so many elements and materials that were completely new to horology.
Mille opened the door to a new era in luxury watchmaking and this tonneau shape truly became synonymous with the brand.
In 2007, the sporty RM 011 arrived in the collection and became an instant classic, thanks in great part to the many race drivers and athletes who chose to wear it.
At the end of 2016, Richard Mille announced it would replace the RM 011 with the RM 11-03 – retiring the chronograph model at the height of its popularity.
The RM 11-03’s new RMAC3 caliber pops more out of the somewhat beefed-up case with its three-dimensionality; glossy beveled edges add a sense of volume that is accentuated even more with the titanium movement’s PVD coating.
The case’s Quartz TPT, a composite material we explained at length in Surprising Use Of Quartz: Richard Mille RM 011 Red TPT Quartz Automatic Flyback Chronograph, is created by stacking 600 layers of silica and adding resin (in this case blue resin) before heating to 120°C and machining. The machining is done in Richard Mille’s own case factory.
Jean Todt RM 050
This case material is also used to house the limited edition Jean Todt RM 050.
“TPT” stands for “thin ply technology,” which describes how 45-micron layers of silica work together with blue resin, which acts like a glue keeping them together. When the materials are heated at that extreme temperature of 120°C, the resin flows between the layers of silica. When the materials cool down again, the resin hardens to create a fused, solid, light material for the case.
This new process and material, which was developed in partnership with Saint-Gobain Quartz and Advalite, is proprietary to Richard Mille in the watch industry. Mille’s team led the design and validation of the process, which was consequently awarded with the JEC World 2016 Innovation Award.
The case band, chronograph pushers, and a portion of the crown are likewise made of the TPT Quartz material, making its debut here in blue.
The RM 050’s split-seconds chronograph tourbillon Caliber RMCC1, the same one used in the RM 056 described below, was based on the movement originally found in the RM008 model, but don’t imagine that modifying it was easy: the reduction in weight largely achieved by skeletonization took engineers and watchmakers months to calculate.
The end result was a full 20 percent reduction in weight, bringing the movement to under 10 grams.
Yes, this is a very light watch.
Jean Todt RM 056
The final limited edition in honor of Jean Todt’s 50th work anniversary is the RM 056, which is housed in a sapphire crystal case requiring more than 1,000 hours of machining.
The first RM 056 appeared in 2012 in an edition of only five pieces.
“This took years and years to develop,” Mille explained at the time. “The case of the RM 056 alone is the most expensive ever made. It was a massive investment in time and people with perfect expertise and knowledge. That expertise is the key to the idea’s success. My clients are extremely interested in new materials and new applications of existing materials; they understand the challenge it represents.
“I wanted to make a splash, a big statement,” he said.
The RM 056’s manually wound tourbillon movement powers a split-seconds chronograph and features torque and function indicators; the former in essence tells the real techie how accurately the watch is performing at any given time.
In addition to the hours and minutes, the RM 056 also displays the power reserve (indicating when the movement must be wound again).
Sapphire crystal is the second-hardest material known to man (after diamond) and can only be worked using diamond-tipped tools. It is, however, a very brittle material – which naturally means that the RM 056 will only likely be worn very carefully, if at all, since if it is dropped, it could conceivably shatter.
All three parts of the case component trio are gruelingly cut from blocks of corundum, and machining it is tricky: there can be no errors, and at the end the possibility exists that there are hitherto unseen imperfections, which would result in it being scrapped.
The process of creating the RM 056’s case took more than 1,000 hours – 430 of which were used to pre-cut and shape the three components and another 360 of which were needed alone for polishing to make the material dynamically transparent.
The case is assembled using twenty titanium spline screws and abrasion-resistant washers crafted in 316L stainless steel.
“I wanted a transparent case to allow everyone to see the complex movement inside. There are many high-tech materials that are transparent and tough; however, many of them are not optically ideal for a wristwatch. This has to do with the transparency and the internal atomic structure of the material. Sapphire crystal, on the other hand, although very hard, has excellent qualities concerning its optical properties, and the type of non-glare coatings that can be applied to it are well-known and tested,” Mille explains.
To accommodate the unusual design, the split-seconds tourbillon caliber was modified so it could be skeletonized, which required the redesign of no less than 400 individual components. Skeletonization – the art of reducing the mass of movement components to their essential minimum using a hand saw and a file – reduced the total weight of the RM 056’s movement by 20 percent as described above.
“This very technical watch is simply too complex to manufacture serially,” Mille explained.
Luckily, though, three of them are included among the excellent examples of watchmaking Richard Mille has created in tribute to Jean Todt.
For more information, please visit:
www.richardmille.com/watch/rm-11-03-jean-todt
www.richardmille.com/watch/rm-050-tourbillon-split-seconds-competition-chronograph
www.richardmille.com/watch/rm-056-jean-todt
Quick Facts Jean Todt RM 11-03 Automatic Flyback Chronograph
Case: 49.94 x 44.5 x 16.15 mm, blue-and-white Quartz TPT
Movement: automatic Caliber RMAC3 with two spring barrels and variable inertia balance, variable geometry rotor, 55-hour power reserve, fast-rotating barrel
Functions: hours, minutes, seconds; flyback chronograph, annual calendar with large date
Limitation: 150 pieces, available only at Richard Mille boutiques
Price: 148,500 Swiss francs (including tax)
Quick Facts Jean Todt RM 050
Case: 50 x 42.7 x 16.3 mm, blue-and-white Quartz TPT
Movement: manually winding Caliber RMCC1 with two titanium column wheels and one-minute tourbillon with variable inertia balance, skeletonized, 70-hour power reserve, fast-rotating barrel, carbon nanofiber
Functions: hours, minutes, seconds; split-seconds chronograph, power reserve indicator, torque indicator, function indicators
Limitation: 5 pieces, available only at Richard Mille boutiques
Price: not yet determined, expect it to be in the neighborhood of $1 million
Quick Facts Jean Todt RM 056
Case: 50 x 18.85 mm, sapphire crystal
Movement: manually winding Caliber RMCC1 with two titanium column wheels and one-minute tourbillon with variable inertia balance, skeletonized, 70-hour power reserve, fast-rotating barrel, carbon nanofiber
Functions: hours, minutes, seconds; split-seconds chronograph, power reserve indicator, torque indicator, function indicators
Limitation: 3 pieces, available only at Richard Mille boutiques
Price: not yet determined, expect it to be between $1.5 and $2 million
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Very enjoyable article Elizabeth, thank you!
In your time with Richard, have you heard any anecdotes around those who own the 056 iterations? Do they in fact, get worn around in the wild? Have any come back for service, or accidentally dropped?
Even the most exclusively produced watches are intended to be worn.. but this one might elicit too many fears of hitting a door handle or metal surface to walk around in!
Colton
Thank you, Colton! You know, that subject has never come up. But now that you’ve brought it up I will ask next time. Interesting questions!