This Watch’s Engine Has 511 Parts. You Won’t Believe What It Does

25 years ago, the Ulysse Nardin Freak changed luxury watchmaking forever.

There was a lot about the Freak that was revolutionary. It rethought how a watch works, with the movement itself rotating and replacing the dial and hands to tell time. It eliminated the crown, instead utilizing the bezel to set the watch and the caseback to wind it. And, most influentially, it introduced silicon as a material in watchmaking, with the lightweight material’s amagnetic properties spurring its wide adoption in escapements across the industry.

Watches and Wonders Geneva: Rolex, Grand Seiko and dozens of other heavy hitters gather in Switzerland every year to release their biggest watches. Catch up on all the new novelties.

UN has created many variations of the Freak since its 2001 introduction, and at Watches and Wonders this year, the brand unveiled the ultimate expression of the model with the aptly named Super Freak; the most complicated time-only watch ever made.

Super freaky, yow

Ulysse Nardin

At the heart of the Super Freak, and on full display, is the new Caliber UN-252 movement. It boasts an insane 511 components, more than 97 percent of which are in constant motion, and yet it doesn’t feature any true complications, not even a date. There’s just one thing this watch does, and that’s tell the time. But it does so in a way that no other watch ever has.

All Freaks feature a centrally rotating one-hour carousel featuring the escapement and a pointer that acts as the minute hand, with a rotating hour disc beneath.

For the Super Freak, Ulysse Nardin decided to go all out with the carousel. Like the Freak S, it features two escapements instead of just one. But instead of regular escapements, both are now flying tourbillons on the Super Freak, making this the world’s only automatic watch with two tourbillons.

Ulysse Nardin

The tourbillons are each mounted at a 10-degree angle and rotate in opposite directions, both making a full revolution once a minute. The tourbillons feature silicon balance wheels and hairsprings, plus escapements made of Diamonsil, UN’s proprietary diamond-coated silicon material.

The tourbillons are connected to a differential, literally the world’s smallest differential, that averages out their rate and then transmits the energy to a new patented gimbal system. This gimbal, which is also the world’s smallest mechanism of its type, transmits the averaged rate from the twin tourbillons to a rotating cylinder displaying the seconds located just below the minute pointer.

Keep in mind, all of this action is happening on the minute bridge carousel, which comprises 327 components, weighs just 3.5 grams and is fully rotating around the dial once per hour. The amount of complexity on display here is just ludicrous.

The rotating hour disc on the Super Freak is made of Nanosital, an extra-hard, transparent polycrystalline glass made from silicon dioxide and aluminum oxide. Here, it’s rendered in a light blue shade and gives a peek at the watch’s automatic winding architecture. It’s also accented with Super-LumiNova hour markers for legibility in the dark.

Ulysse Nardin

Speaking of that automatic winding system, the Super Freak, like the Freak S and Freak One, uses UN’s proprietary Grinder system. Instead of a traditional rotor, it features a quartet of spring-loaded levers that transfer the tiniest movement in any direction into energy for the mainspring. It’s the world’s most efficient automatic winding system, and it grants the Super Freak a power reserve of 72 hours.

Lastly, the Super Freak features a newly designed 44mm case in white gold. While not a small watch by any stretch of the imagination, it is more compact than the 45mm Freak S, and despite its 16.54 mm thickness, it is surprisingly wearable on its white gold deployant-equipped gray rubber strap, even on my 6.5-inch wrist.

Ulysse Nardin

Availability and pricing

Each Super Freak is assembled by a single watchmaker (just five watchmakers are qualified to do so), with assembly alone taking 60 hours. Ulysse Nardin just keeps taking the Freak further and further, and it’s hard to imagine the brand ever topping the Super Freak … though I’m sure they’ll find a way eventually.

Given the amount of work that goes into each watch, the Super Freak is highly limited, with Ulysse Nardin producing just 50 of the watches in total. Each one is priced at an eye-popping $393,600, a price that seems less shocking once you’ve handled this masterpiece in the metal.

Ulysse Nardin

Ulysse Nardin Super Freak

Specs

Case Size	44mm
Movement	Ulysse Nardin Cal. UN-252 dual-tourbillon automatic
Water Resistance	30m

• $393,600 at Ulysse Nardin

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