Porsche Design Empties Your Pocket With the 31K Globetimer UTC Gold Edition

Porsche Design has been known for quite a few things that, frankly, don’t have much to do with the cars themselves, except for some. But, they do tend to still hold true to materials and even some design aspects. For example, their 911 Speaker uses actual exhaust components from the 911. This time, however, the resemblance between car and trinket isn’t so obvious, except if you’re looking at the price tag.

What we’re talking about here is the 1919 Globetimer UTC. But not the one that started it all, this one is mainly about the Gold Edition. That’s not to say that the standard UTC isn’t good enough, it is, but this one is just friggin' gold! With a price tag difference of nearly 25 grand, the standard just doesn't get the same attention this one does.

Think about it like this. You head out to the dinner party one evening and someone notices a gold shine under your cuff. Noticing the look, you look at the time, exposing this black and gold brilliance. The room goes quiet. You can almost hear it ticking, but nah, it’s as silent as the blood flowing through your veins.

I'm just kidding about the quiet bit, it is just a watch after all, but a $31,500 watch (27,000 euro at the time of publishing). But she doesn’t just cost this much because she’s made of gold, no, there’s more to it than that. One of the neat things she can do, and might also be the reason for her name, is change time zones at the touch of a button, and she does this without losing any second or minute placements.

The Gold Edition uses the same caliber mechanism as its cheaper brother, but that’s because the Werk 04.110 is the second in-house mechanism developed by Porsche Design. It’s so damn good at keeping time that it has received approval from COSC in Switzerland, a lead neutral-party timepiece authority.

The case is clearly gold. But to give it a bit of a hue, it uses 18-carat 4N rose gold. To give it that luster and allure, finishing includes glass bead blasting and polishing, a technique used to polish aluminum in the automotive industry.

A water-resistance up to 10 bar is offered by the screw-down case back and crown. The crown keeps secure a sapphire crystal with scratch-proof and anti-glare properties.

On the dial we see several dials and features. Aside from classic hour and minute dials, we also find a day dial, and a day/night feature that tells you where you are in case you’ve been underground for days.

To hold you and it together, we find genuine Porsche car leather with stitching. A folding titanium clasp with pusher and a buckle made of the same 18-carat rose gold. 26 jewels and a battery reserve of 38 hours makes sure you can probably pass this down to your kids.

Just to offer a bit of perspective into this watch, her total weight is 132.16 grams, of which 99.12 grams are fine gold. But as banging as she is, she seems to be bothered by sudden and extreme temperature and humidity fluctuations, direct sunlight and even magnetic fields. But hey, if anything happens, at least you can pawn if for a fraction of what you paid.