Feature: The Richard Mille Watch With A Ridiculous Function
Say what you like about Richard Mille—and everyone seems to have a strong opinion about this polarising brand—but it’s hard to deny its galvanising effect on the watch industry since it launched in 2000.
Few luxury watch brands have made such a huge impression in such a short space of time.
You could put its success down to a number of things, from mind-blowing designs to carefully selected sporting brand ambassadors, unorthodox materials to the defiant mindset of its eponymous founder—who proudly states that he has “no obligations” to historical watchmaking.
But perhaps what Richard Mille has done best of all is to remind us of the fact that luxury watches can have a sense of humour and turn a few neat tricks that don’t necessarily need to have anything to do with telling the time at all.
And the RM 38-01 G-Sensor Bubba Watson, an upgrade of the RM 038 model, certainly features a world-first, incredibly specific and highly unusual non-time-related function…
Richard Mille's RM 38-01 with its innovative G-Sensor at 12 o'clock
Sex Machines
Functions in watches that are unrelated to time are nothing new, of course. Any long-time watch aficionado will have seen the X-rated models made by a number of high-end brands, including Ulysse Nardin and Blancpain, featuring automata—3-D moving images—that would make your granny blush. The industry refers to them—with a nudge and a wink—as "bonking watches."
Richard Mille has its own version of this, the RM69 Erotic Tourbillon with a dial that creates a random, sexually explicit three-line message at the press of a button.
Christophe Claret’s Poker watch, meanwhile, allows the wearer to play a game of cards and includes a rotor that doubles as a working roulette wheel. And there’s also Jaquet Droz with its numerous automata dials of moving birds.
A pusher allows the G-Sensor to be re-set to zero, ready for the next swing!
The RM 38-01 G-Sensor Bubba Watson, however, is a little less frivolous and—despite the rather suggestive name—has nothing to do with sex, gambling or twee nature scenes.
It’s a non-time related function that’s actually useful – well, if you play a certain sport…
A Good Walk Spoiled?
The writer Mark Twain, clearly not a fan, called golf “a good walk spoiled”. And you can sort of see his point. You don’t need to be footballer-fit to play it, nor do you need the stamina of Mo Farah or the strength of a rugby player. And, well, those Pringle sweaters don’t good look on anyone.
Still, in the days of Mark Twain there were no Richard Mille watches.
The RM38-01, dare we say it, might have changed Mr Twain’s mind had he been wearing one while playing a few rounds on the fairways. It’s a technical marvel that introduces a first-of-its-kind watch function.
Superhuman Swing
In the golfing world, few players can hit a ball as far and as hard as the American PGA Tour legend, Bubba Watson. Typically, he can hit a ball over 320 metres, generating a ball speed of up to 194 mph.
Richard Mille loves its brand ambassadors to wear its watches while playing—thus showcasing their toughness to the world—and so it devised a watch that could not only deal with the G-force of Watson’s monstrous golf swing but measure it.
US golfer Bubba Watson is one of the game's big hitters
The RM38-01 Tourbillon G-Sensor Bubba Watson, to give it its full name, bears all the hallmarks of a typical Richard Mille watch–from the tonneau case to the skeleton dial–but includes a semi-circular display beneath 12 o’clock that measures the peak acceleration that the watch experienced during the swing. A pusher at 9 o’ clock returns the needle on the display back to zero and it’s ready to go again.
Not a golfer? There’s no reason the G-Sensor can’t be used to record the swing of a baseball or cricket bat either. Heck, you can use it swinging an axe while dressed as a Viking if that's how you like to spend your well-earned leisure time! We won't judge.
What Else?
G-force function aside, this manual-wind watch features the usual Richard Mille craziness: a tourbillon; a curved caseback for supreme wearability; a super-lightweight mix of quartz and PVD-treated grade 5 titanium components; and that supple, high-tech rubber strap that is another part of the brand’s signature, futuristic look.
The mechanical G-sensor containing more than 50 moving parts
An especially neat touch is the golf-ball on the crown, proving once again that Richard Mille doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Should you want to show off to your wealthy golfing pals next time you’re at the country club, you’ll be interested to know that the original list price for this incredible watch, limited to 50 pieces, was a wince-inducing $825,000—with no guarantee, unfortunately, of hitting the ball as far as Bubba Watson.
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