IWC certainly has a special place in my watch heart, it probably will stay my favourite brand, unless something dramatic happens. It can be considered a top class brand, the technology is great enough, the looks indeed still has that restrained something that I like so much, like on my newest, the Portofino handwound eight days. This forum is quite special and unique too.
After being a member of this forum for apparently ten years I learned a thing or two.
The heritage is true in a way, but enlarged and adapted to marketing needs. There is not much wrong with that, but for instance the Portuguese watches never were intended for water or sea. Just two Portuguese gentlemen asking for a realiable wrist watch with a pocket watch movement. So it had to be bigger than usual in those days, those Portuguese watches were not popular at all until they took off about twenty years ago.
The six watch families existed off and on, there were periods that these lines were not clear or even existing, like the Portuguese, the Pilot's watches, the Aquatimers, the Ingenieurs. About the past ten years numerous, even almost uncountable versions were produced of the Portuguese Chrono, the Big Pilot and the Big Pilot Perpetual Calendar. I see nothing wrong in that, other brands do likewise with their success models.
The position of IWC in the watch world changed dramatically the last ten years. I guess Richemont and Georges Kern performed the class act to make IWC a top luxury brand, where it was a bit of a dark horse producing high quality tool watches for those who knew. IWC had the good fortune to have a truly great watch maker and movement designer, Kurt Klaus: IWC owes him the world for his perpetual calendar mechanism, and much more.
The construction of the movements is great enough, but those great movements of fifty years ago all went during the quartz crisis. For a long time improved ETA movements were used, being very reliable. The new in-house movements are great too, but have all their fair share of problems, just as all the movements of all the other great brands: it all are intricate little machines that perform really well when compared to cars, for instance.
What I want to say is, that while IWC is a great brand with great watches, there is no need for sainthood here. I learned that there are lots of great brands, and I just happen to like IWC.
Kind regards,
Paul
