Some collaboration watches are pained to the point of excruciating, but occasionally there comes along one that’s so perfect, so obvious in hindsight that it’s more painful you didn’t think of it. The new project from Ulysse Nardin and Urwerk is the latter. I got a sneak peak of this bad boy back in the summer and even then it had me wondering why it took decades for this to happen. You take two of the most iconic modern watches of the 90s and slap them together into the perfectly named UR-FREAK.
On one hand you have the Freak which by now doesn’t really need an introduction. Its carousel movement and kickstarting of watchmaking’s adoration of silicon, the insane case shape, all of it combines into one of the few genuinely ground-breaking modern watches. In specific, the base model here is the Freak One, the modern update to the original, with its 44mm case.
On the other side you have the gloriously, obsessively over-engineered insanity of Urwerk, meaning that the 44mm case is in their signature sandblasted anthracite titanium. More importantly is the element we all know Urwerk for: their satellite hours. This trio of turning discs, read off a static scale between 1 and 5 o’clock is among the most captivating timekeeping methods in watchmaking.
Both Ulysse Nardin and Urwerk are part of a handful of intense, modern watchmakers that were pushing the boundaries of the craft in an era in which that just wasn’t done. Pair that with strong aesthetic identities and an independence that put a middle finger up to the more traditional maisons and you have what is essentially counterculture haute horology.
All the superlatives aside, the base idea with the UR-FREAK is that the Freak’s signature carousel has been replaced by Urwerk’s. That’s all. Oh, there’s a huge amount of extra work off the drawing board – 150 new parts have been machined for the watch – but the idea is that basic. And I absolutely love it. It’s one of those ‘what-ifs’ that us watch nerds like to spitball at the pub, and the fact that I never considered this one makes me hate it just a little bit.
Technically, you could argue that it’s a little more Ulysse Nardin that Urwerk, given the case and the fact it still includes things like their Grinder winding mechanism and its associated 90-hour power reserve. The movement itself has a UN designation – the UN-241 (I hope that’s an actual two-for-one joke there) – and silicon components and overall it feels more like a twist on the Freak than a half-and-half.
But given the kind of platform the Freak provides compared to the gloriously oversized and oddly shaped blocks of metal that define Urwerk, this was always going to be the sharpest solution. And I’m not sure I’d have it any other way.
As for price, the UR-FREAK will set you back £100,340, which feels like more than the sum of their parts (although many of Urwerk’s get there). Surprisingly I was expecting a scant handful of them available, but Ulysse Nardin and Urwerk are producing 100 pieces. That’s another signal that this is more UN than UW, given that’s two-thirds of the latter’s annual production. But honestly, I don’t really care who’s doing more of the work. I’m just happy – and again, hindsightedly frustrated – the UR-FREAK is a thing.
Price and Specs:
More details at Ulysse Nardin.
Freaking expensive for something akin to a child’s watch.