Bovet | Battista Tourbillon

Working closely with Automobili Pininfarina, Bovet has created a timepiece that perfectly complements the Battista, the world’s first pure electric hyper GT vehicle, featuring unrivalled craftsmanship and attention to details.

Powerful, precise, beautiful, elegant…  these words describe both the new Automobili Pininfarina Battista and the new Battista Tourbillon from Bovet 1822. Designed alongside one another, they share the same design vision based on legendary styling and innovation.

The Automobili Pininfarina Battista has been recognised for its design excellence and already has several awards to its name, as production of pre-series Battistas reaches completion and clients prepare to take delivery of the world’s first pure electric hyper GT later this year. Each vehicle is personalised in accordance with the customer’s individual specifications, thus ensuring unrivalled exclusivity.

Two brands rooted in design
The Pininfarina name is characterised by its rich history in design excellence and craftsmanship, creating automotive artwork for more than 90 years. Bovet echoes this ethos in horology, with generations of artisans over its almost 200 years of history shaping incredible, meticulously detailed timepiece artistry.

This mutual expertise was apparent from the very start of the houses’ partnership in creating the Battista Tourbillon timepiece alongside the Battista hyper GT, when Bovet owner Pascal Raffy and the Automobili Pininfarina Design Team met for the first time in Cambiano, Italy.

The unique skills of both houses led to the creation of a one-of-a-kind timepiece. The completely in-house development and manufacturing of this hand-made masterpiece of horology offered the freedom to create highly bespoke parts and decorations with utmost precision, while ensuring that the highest quality standards could be met.

The creation of a client’s Battista is a process of virtually unlimited personalisation, with more than 128 million combinations for the interior colour and materials alone, ensuring the only limits are the dreams of the client. The combined expertise of Bovet and Automobili Pininfarina have made it possible to take this approach a step further, giving clients the possibility to express their personalities and that of their bespoke Battista through the timepiece as well.

Purity in design
The Automobili Pininfarina and Bovet design teams worked hand-in-hand in the creation of the Battista Tourbillon and the latter is an expression of their shared design values. With a focus on lightness and purity, the timepiece extends Battista’s design philosophy and endows it with another dimension. Detailing inspired by Battista’s most characteristic design features can be found in every part of the timepiece, including the movement’s mechanical components. The craftsmanship of Bovet made it possible to design remarkable details that only the most skilled artisans can make by hand. Sapphire crystals on both sides ensure that the inner beauty of this mechanical masterpiece can be enjoyed and admired, opening up the view of the movement visible from all sides. In addition, the sapphire crystals are shaped at 12 and 6 o’clock to integrate the specially designed vegan rubber straps.

Applying the design know-how and philosophy of the Battista to such a small-scale object was however an enormous challenge, requiring the automotive and timepiece design teams to adopt a completely different approach. Combining this different expertise from both sides, the timepiece incorporates fresh and ground-breaking ideas within a classically-oriented watchmaking structure coupled with extraordinary finishing.

Inspiration for this came from the Battista’s most recognisable features, like the exterior curves and design details. The design teams took these shapes and created watch hands, bridges, dials, and other structures that connect the design of the Battista to that of the timepiece. The aesthetic features more fluid, Pininfarina-style shapes compared to traditional timepieces. As an example, the flying bridge above the two main dials of the timepiece has a subtle three-dimensionality that is unique and reflects the curves of the Battista.

References to the Battista can be found throughout the timepiece. Subtle background characteristics such as the Triangolo pattern on the dials or the top of the Battista, reimagined in miniature and viewed through the sapphire crystal exhibition case back, marry the timepiece and the hypercar.

The watch features the Automobili Pininfarina and Bovet collaborative flags on the power-reserve dial, a signature Pininfarina detail that celebrates both companies’ heritage and future.

The E-Heart of the timepiece
One of the Battista’s most recognisable features, the E-Heart represents Automobili Pininfarina’s spirit of constant innovation. It is the physical element that, besides being functional, acts as an icon on Battista and will continue to do so on subsequent models by the carmaker.

Whereas in the Battista the E-Heart indicates the state of charging, it appears on the front of the timepiece in the shape of the large date display, while the back reveals Bovet’s patented differential winding mechanism that makes rewinding the timepiece for a full ten days of power reserve easier and quicker. The E-heart therefore not only acts as a visual reference in the timepiece, but also serves a genuine function.

The timepiece
The Battista Tourbillon truly represents the pinnacle of haute horlogerie. From the exquisite details and finishing of each and every component to the utmost complexity of the movement, the timepiece is a showcase of high watchmaking at its finest.

The construction of the Battista Tourbillon re-sults in a highly three-dimensional appearance, with each part of the movement and its complications clearly visible both from the front of the timepiece as well as through the exhibition case back and the exposed sides. The 45.6-millimeter case consists of two large sapphire crystals, enhancing the lightness and purity of the design.

For the first time in Bovet’s 200-year history, the two-tone blue dials on the front of the timepiece are asymmetrical, featuring Battista’s Triangolo pattern and shaded from light to dark blue, while together forming the shape of the number “90,” a reference to the Battista Anniversario and Pininfarina’s 90-year heritage. The famous collaborative flags appear on the left-hand dial dedicated to the power reserve, with the “F” for Pininfarina on the left and the lotus flower for Bovet on the right, while the big date complication takes pride of place on the right-hand dial.

Further references to Battista’s design can be found across the entire watch face. Above the two main dials, the flying bridge resemble the Battista’s curves, and the “V” in Bovet, while the tourbillon cage is inspired by the car’s Impulso wheels with their centre-lock technology. The hands of the timepiece and the hour-indication ring are a reference to the design of the Battista’s bodywork.

The exhibition case back offers a view of the movement’s main structure, which is an abstract representation of Battista’s curves that wrap around the teardrop-shaped Goccia roof like a clamshell. The two-tone colouring of the bridges further reinforces this reference to the Battista.

The fine detailing in Iconica Blu is combined with traditional finishing such as Côtes de Genève, chamfering and polishing. In addition, Super-LumiNova has been generously applied to all the hands, including the seconds indication structure on the top of the tourbillon cage, the ring underneath the tourbillon, as well as the hand of the power reserve, the hour-markers, and even the big date display.

The movement
The Battista Tourbillon features a brand-new movement using Bovet’s patented two-sided tourbillon, running at 18,000 vibrations per hour, with a single barrel providing an incredible 10-day power reserve. This calibre was created from scratch specifically for the Battista Tourbillon, based on design input from Automobili Pininfarina.

The patented two-sided flying tourbillon is attached at the centre of its axis, and the weight distribution of the escapement and balance-spring drastically reduces the lever-arm effect and friction, another example of the high precision and complexity of this movement.

The miniaturisation of the winding mechanism resulted in a second patent – a mechanical watch with a 10-day power reserve would typically require twice as many turns of the crown to wind; however, the exclusive winding system in the Battista Tourbillon and its spherical differential halves this number.

The human touch
Both houses emphasise the importance of hand craftsmanship in their products. At Bovet, in combination with the most modern manufacturing methods, an artisan hand-finishes every component throughout the production process, whether it is polishing, chamfering, teeth-cutting, hardening, engraving, or decorating. And, at the end of the process, each and every timepiece is hand-assembled by master-watchmakers.

On the wrist
Surprisingly light in terms of both weight and transparency, the Battista Tourbillon makes quite an impression when worn. Though at 45.6mm, it couldn’t be considered small, the watch features a bow integrated into the strap and enabling it to fit just about any wrist size. Thanks to the skeletonised structures of the movement itself and the sapphire crystals on both sides, it is thin and extremely comfortable.