The Million-Dollar Rock-and-Roll Revolution: Richard Mille's RM 66 Gold-Titanium Watch

The RM 66 is controversial, to be polite, but also fascinating in build, concept, technology, and material pairing. The timepiece largely follows the Richard Mille philosophy of high-end watchmaking – complications, aesthetics, functionality, luxury, and unicity.

The case is a three-component assembly, with the bezel and back carved from black Carbon TPT – a feature that imbues the watch with layer-forged steel apparel. The two extremities are spline-screwed to the main grade-5-Titanium-and-red-gold caseband. The solid gold inserts slide into the case and are locked in place by the bezel and back.

Curved, anti-glare coated, hard sapphire crystals cover the face and back of the watch, sealing the movement from the exterior. Two Nitrile gaskets provide 50-meter deep-dive waterproofing. RM 66 is a serious hunk of a timepiece to wear around: 42.7 mm wide, 50 mm long, and 16.1 mm thick is a lot of timekeeping around one’s wrist.

Neither the expensive or heavy-duty materials nor the watch’s size is what sets it apart and draws attention. It’s the design of the movement that sticks out from the crowd. A skeleton hand clasped in a three-dimensional Devil’s Horns hand gesture is a double-edged symbolistic hint at supernatural forces (malevolent and protective alike) and outrageous promiscuity.

The winding crown, traditionally placed at the three-o’clock mark, is a masterpiece of watchmaking in its own right. Designed to protect the mainspring against over-winding, the torque-restricting shaft automatically disengages when the tension reaches its optimal peak value.

It may sound like a dismal detail but remember that the RM 66 Flying Tourbillon is a manual movement. The watch needs to be cranked back to life every three days or so – depending on the wearer’s lifestyle.

With all that stress put on the winding assembly, the self-protecting complication is a crucial piece of the cog-and-spring puzzle. The watch’s sensitive internals can’t be damaged by an over-enthusiastic rotation force applied to the crown.

This piece is also made of titanium alloy (90% Titanium, 6% Aluminum, 4% Vanadium), and it took Richard Mille 212 hours to complete the fabrication of this piece. Twelve hours is the actual machining and detailed finishing of the spider-shaped crown. the other 200 are dedicated to design and development.

A black rubber collar and a synthetic ruby form the core of the talon-like knob, and a skull insignia harkens back to the heavy-metal/mystical theme of the watch’s design. RM’s Flying Tourbillon takes the skeletonized movement concept one step further.

The skeleton hand – hand-made from 5N red Gold – is the literal interpretation of bare-metal architecture. While the watch face showcases the outstretched index and pinky, the back – visible when the RM 66 is not worn – features the thumb holding down the middle and ring fingers.

Made famous by Ronnie James Dio during his Black Sabbath days, the gesture came to be the epitome of rock and roll – with all the connotations implied by this association. The bony mini-sculpture is machine-milled, hand-finished, and micro-blasted by a master engraver.

The hour indexes – sculpted in the shape of guitar plectrums (the rock tribute is strikingly obvious here) – are covered in a luminescent lume, making time-telling easy even in pitch dark. The heart of the precision mechanism, the Flying Tourbillon, is a Richard Mille premiere.

Located at the 12 o’clock segment, the tourbillon features a variable inertia balance inverted 180 degrees. The upside-down tourbillon cage has one mounting point at the base, eliminating the need for a second upper bridge. This innovation makes the RM 66’s flying tourbillon an illusory antigravitational watch complication.

Caliber RM 66 runs at 21,600 vibrations per hour (which corresponds to a three-Hertz frequency), and the power reserve induced by a full winding lasts 72 hours. With an official retail price of $1,095,000, the Flying Tourbillon from Richard Mille rocks a most exclusivist production series of just fifty pieces.