Hello all,
Well I finally gone and done it - found one of my grail watches (why did I go
and look on Chrono24 that day...?). For many years the IWC 866 Ingenieur has
been one of my all time favourite watches. Everything about them ticks the
boxes for me - great company and history, fantastic (in-house) movement in the
8541, beautiful dials and hands (especially the exquisite paddle seconds
hand), they have a date and can have an applied logo, the case is
aesthetically great for me, nice big crown and they can come on an 'oyster'
bracelet. Usually with watches I can find 'something' that I can say, 'Hmm,
maybe I'll reserve judgement until I see the watch in person'. Not the cae
with the IWC 866 Ingenieur.
So last Monday I had a trip to Amsterdam and, despite some technical troubles
with laptops and omline banking, came home with this. I think many of you may
recognise this watch :-) I love the way the date can be changed by playing
windscreen wipers with the hands over midnight, and also how smooth the crown
rotation feels and the instant response of the seconds hand when it starts to
move after starting to wind the crown. I think I'll have to let the bank
account recover for a while before looking for a second IWC: in the meantime I
guess I can enjoy this one for some time to come....