Over the years, MB&F have established their brand to be synonymous with idiosyncratic timepieces that paired bewildering mechanical movements with science fiction aesthetics. While the same themes run through the MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual, it expands into an entirely new territory, since the watch comes with a perpetual calendar complication that’s been fashioned in-house from the ground up.
Building on the original complication found in the Legacy Machine series of watches, it boasts a full perpetual calendar mechanism that’s fully integrated into the watch engine, raising the independent company’s profile in a massive way. Simply put, it places them in a rarefied place usually reserved for Switzerland’s largest and oldest watchmakers.
For the Legacy Machine Perpetual, MB&F tapped Irish watchmaker Stephen McDonnel to help design and build the calendar complication. The result is a mechanism that’s completely original, with features that allow it to eliminate the drawbacks frequently found in traditional perpetual calendars. According to the company, the 581-component engine is as trouble-free as a perpetual calendar can ever get, with no skipping dates, no jamming gears, and adjuster pushers that automatically deactivate while the calendar is changing, making it impossible to damage the watch by performing adjustments in the middle of a date change.
The dial is, of course, skeletonized to show off as much of the movement as possible, with a heavily populated face bearing separate indicators for the time, day, month, year, and power reserve. Features include two options in case material (18-karat red gold or platinum 950), 72 hours of power reserve, sapphire crystals both top and back with anti-reflective coating, a water resistance rating of 90 feet, and two color choices in alligator straps (either black or dark brown).
Only 50 pieces of the MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual will be made (25 in gold, 25 in platinum). Pricing is set at $145,000 for the gold and $176,000 for the platinum.