Gear Patrol

Wheels and gears, second hands and tach needles, power trains and power reserves. Men have always been fascinated by time, speed, accuracy and power — and the beautiful combination of high-end timepieces and exotic roadgoing automobiles captures these obsessions appropriately. And whether the watch of choice is used to measure lap splits or to simply echo the same kind of quality and heritage as his car, you can be assured that careful time was taken to select both. We match up some of the best in timekeeping and automobilia in Gear Patrol style.

Hope you’ve been taking care of yourself. The A. Lange & Söhne 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar ($189,000 in rose gold, $213,000 in platinum) won’t need to be corrected until the year 2100 (only one in four century years is a leap year — 2100 is not). That’s 87 years of being entirely correct; not even your better half can beat that. We break it down.

Nothing helps shake off the doldrums of mid-winter like a visit to Geneva for the annual Salon International Haute Horlogerie. For the uninformed, SIHH is the watch trade show put on by the watch brands under the Richemont Group umbrella and some of their friends. Familiar names like IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Panerai set up shop next to lesser known watchmakers like Parmigiani and Gruebel-Forsey in the grand confines of the Palexpo convention center. We asked Gear Patrol’s Timekeeping writers to weigh in on what impressed them the most from this year’s crop of timepieces. Their picks vary from the classic to the outrageous (see the Tourbillon Yohan Blake, below), and together they represent a great range of SIHH 2013.

Gear Patrol’s Jason Heaton travels to Saxony, home of A. Lange & Söhne, to explore the region, experience the watchmaker and learn its storied history. Read on for our short film, photo essay and his story — filled with snowy drives, German culture, precision watchmaking and an incredible company that came out of the cold.

Christmas came early in Saxony this year, at least for Gear Patrol and a few other journalists who were given a rare sneak preview of one A. Lange & Söhne’s novelty timepieces for 2013. On a snowy night in a villa overlooking the Elbe River in Dresden, Lange CEO Wilhelm Schmid introduced the Grand Lange…

Two years ago, we were invited to visit the Glashütte, Germany workshops of A. Lange & Söhne, and ever since then, we’ve been a fan of the brand. Their understated elegance flies under the radar of all but the timepiece cognoscenti, most of whom shorten the tongue-twister name into simply, “Lange”. Since the brand emerged…

When we think of fine watches, our minds automatically shift to thoughts of the quaint villages and alpine vistas of Switzerland, or, increasingly, to Germany’s Glashütte region, where brands like A. Lange & Söhne and Glashütte Original hail. But what of merry old England? Given that some of the most renowned figures in horology have…

Ask the average guy where the best watches in the world are made and he will undoubtedly say, “Switzerland.” After all, most of the recognizable brands like Jaeger-LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, Rolex and Patek Philippe hail from that neutral Alpine nation. It is partly the neutrality of Switzerland that has allowed these great names of horology…

While peering through a magnifying lens, counting 184 tiny faces carved on a cherry pit, I started to understand what sets the German watch company, A. Lange & Söhne, apart. I was in the “Green Vault” of the Residenzschloss in Dresden, the historic palace of Saxon royalty, where a staggering collection of opulent knick-knacks is…