The Must-See Timepieces From LVMH Watch Week
Expect plenty of gold, serious movements and intricate dials.
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LVMH is back with a bang… well, sort of.
The company had originally planned to hold the kick-off for its Q1 watches in 2022 with a big in-person unveiling in Geneva this month, which got derailed due to the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. The company had hosted its first annual Watch Week in January of 2020 with a splashy event in Dubai, just before Covid-19 went global, which gave the company a bit of an unexpected leg up over its competitors who were forced to unveil watches later in the year over a series of Zoom press conferences. But, to accommodate the change of plans this year, the company showed watches in respective markets in lieu of a global gathering. The big trends are yellow-gold cases, slim-down profiles and movements and serious dial work. Here is a look at some of the highlights.
HUBLOT
Big Bang Integral Time Only
Hublot Big Bang Integral Time Only Hublot
The Big Bang trims its waistline. For the first time, the Big Bang Integral is being offered in a new 40mm size. Hublot watches have, traditionally, catered to pumped-up wrists in sizes up to 45mm. “In the ‘80s, our first watch, I believe, was 35mm and at that time that was a men’s watch,” Hublot CEO, Riccardo Guadalupe told Robb Report. “We went to 48 mm five or six years ago and I think we are going down heavily [in size].” Previous editions of the Big Bang Integral, however, came in 42mm but demand for more unisex-friendly watches has seen many brands begin offering models in reduced diameters. “We believe that we can sell this watch either to men or women,” Guadalupe, confirmed. “We believe that the ergonomics, the lightness and the size are quite important.” The new slim-fit look doesn’t just apply to its circumference; it is also the thinnest iteration at just 9.25-mm thick. The dial has also been scaled-back to a time-only layout versus its predecessor’s flyback chronograph movement. However, it features the same integrated bracelet as the original.
“Integral was really a big challenge, because as you know we are known for rubber straps and not bracelets,” said Guadalupe. “A year ago we launched the Big Bang Integral in 42mm in titanium, ceramic and rose gold. Since then, we have also developed new colours of ceramic. But we wanted the Integral to be a big pillar in our collection in the future.”
Three versions of the new 40mm Big Bang Integral are offered in an all-black ceramic, yellow-gold and titanium timepieces.
Price: All-black ceramic, $27,800, limited to 250; yellow gold, $68,800; titanium, $24,800.
Yellow Gold Collection
Hublot Yellow Gold Collection Hublot
Reminder: Gold is back, baby! Hublot is introducing the precious metal across all of its pillar collections including the above Big Bang Integral, the Big Bang Unico, the Classic Fusion Chronograph and the Spirit of Big Bang. “I was thinking about yellow gold for a few years, because it was really in fashion in the ‘80s and ‘90s,” Riccardo Guadalupe told Robb Report. “In 1980, when we came with our first Fusion [the Classic Original] watch it was in 18-carat gold with a rubber strap. So, I said to myself, ‘We should go back to those roots and come with a few models in yellow gold.’” It demonstrates a serious push for the alloy following several years of a steel rush and it’s refreshing. Guadalupe also nodded to the cyclical nature of fashion as an influence, rightly predicting the comeback of ’80s style which has already been reinvigorated on the runways.
“We will see what the market reaction will be, but sometimes it’s just a feeling and we want to be leaders of the trend that is going to happen,” he said. “Fashion always recycles and in fashion, the cycles are shorter, but in the watch industry it can be a 10- or 20-year cycle to come back to a material or another thing that has become fashionable again.” Guadalupe, however, opted for the titanium Big Bang Integral to wear on his wrist during our meeting. Nevertheless, we suspect his big bet on gold will be just in time for the next sartorial wave.
Price: Classic Fusion Chronograph ($37,400), Big Bang Integral ($73,200), Big Bang Unico ($51,200), Spirit of Big Bang ($56,500)
BULGARI
Octo Roma Blue Carillon Tourbillon
Bulgari Octo Roma Blue Carillon Tourbillon Bulgari
Bulgari focused primarily on its women’s collections for its Q1 introductions (see below), but its Octo Roma Carillon got a snazzy update with the introduction of a blue high-tech carbon-based coating on the movement and the circumference of the platinum case when viewed from the side. The company also added hour indexes and an Arabic numeral at 12 o’clock. While the new hue is certainly electrifying, the numerals distract from the modern architecture of the BVL428 calibre with cut-out bridges in an ALD treatment, as well as a perforated surface made of alternating polished steel. Nevertheless, it’s a serious complication piece featuring three gongs, visible on the dial side and attached directly to the body of the case, along with three openings on the side of the case for better sound amplification. The gongs are bent and formed by hand in several stages before being hardened at temperatures up to 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit before being cleaned and reheated in a 932-degree kiln, which gives the metal its superior sound. They are drawn out with a file in order to hone the chords of the chime. It plays note C for the hours; E, D and C for the quarters; and E for the minutes.
It features 75 hours of power reserve and houses 432 components in a movement measuring 25mm by 8.25mm. It’s a big watch, as is to be expected from this kind of timepiece, at 44 mm by 12.83 mm thick and comes with a matching blue alligator strap to highlight its new hue.
Price: Upon request, limited to 30.
Serpenti Piccolissimo
Bulgari Serpenti Misteriosi Bulgari
Talk about striking! Bulgari’s latest high-jewellery Serpenti Misteriosi timepieces, not surprisingly, are the most seductive women’s watches in the LVMH lineup. The Serpenti is so iconic it hardly needs an update, but this year the Italian house decided to equip the model with its other area of expertise—ultra-slim watchmaking. The new Piccolissimo (Italian for “very small”) BVL100 calibre is one of the smallest calibres in the world. The only other calibre to rival that claim is Jaeger-LeCoultre’s calibre 101, which is rectangular, unlike Bulgari’s spherical creation. Bulgari’s however takes the cake for the thinnest at 2.5mm versus JLC’s at 3.4mm.
It’s the company’s latest twist on extreme thinness, following a series of multiple world record’s in its Octo Finissimo line for men. And while the company already laid claim to the world’s thinnest tourbillon movement in the Serpenti Seduttori, Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, Bulgari’s creative director and head of watch design, says it actually takes its cues from the ultra-thin movements of the Finissimo line and zero components were used from the Seduttori tourbillon. “The idea behind this movement was to elevate the Serpenti as the best of our know-how,” he said in a small group of journalists during a press conference Monday morning. He added that the company felt obliged to create the in-house movement for its high-jewellery Serpentis because, “These kind of pieces that cost a fortune, the idea to have a quartz movement starts to become something that is not interesting for this kind of market. Even the ladies would love to have a mechanical movement for these kinds of watches.”
While the movement is certainly the biggest news for the Serpenti, there have been other refinements including more details on the interior of the mouths from gem-setting to fine-finishing, as well as a slimmer body, neck and a flatter head. In fact, Buonamassa Stigliani says that it took 6 to 8 months just to perfect the shape of the case and head between the size, weight and movement. The entire design, including the movement, was three years in the works. Meanwhile, for the first time, the tongue of the snake operates as a lever to open the head and the interior watch can fully detach from the head for easier after-sales servicing, preventing damage to the jewellery structure. The patented crown, which can be found underneath the serpent’s lower jaw, features a bidirectional system (which does not require the crown to be pulled out) that sets the time in one direction and winds the watch in the other direction.
The new series is based on heritage examples of early Serpentis, including one that belonged to Elizabeth Taylor in the early ’60s (pictured below, left). That piece was mimicked in a white gold case and head set with 626 round brilliant-cut diamonds, 2 pear-cut emeralds, a diamond-paved dial, a yellow-gold double-tour bracelet with round brilliant-cut diamonds and a white-gold tail set with round brilliant-cut diamonds, which is the most expensive of the lot at approx. $383,000. Unlike the original, it features an immaculate invisible snow-setting of diamonds that carry through to the interior of the snake’s mouth and along the bezel of the timepiece inside.
Elizabeth Taylor’s 1961 Serpenti; A Heritage Serpenti from the Bulgari Archives Buglari
And while you really can’t go wrong with any Serpenti, least of all one that takes after a provenance piece owned by one of the most famous jewellery collectors in Hollywood history, the rose gold case set with brilliant-cut diamonds, turquoise inserts, a 2 pear-cut rubellites for the eyes is another clear standout—so beautiful, it’s downright sinful (approx. $351,000). Both this version and the one mentioned above also come with a faceted sapphire crystal dial cover for extra sparkle. The black (approx. $232,000) and emerald enamel (approx. $319,000) Serpentis are hand-engraved and feature flat, instead of faceted sapphire crystal covering the dials.
Buglari
Bulgari Serpenti Misteriosi
Needless to say, these are historic pieces, thanks to the introduction of a mechanical movement and a thoughtful redesign, and will be the must-have Serpentis to own for serious collectors (with six-figure price tags to match). While they will be small in production numbers they are, however, not technically limited.
Serpenti Tubogas
Bulgari Serpenti Tubogas Bulgari
The Serpenti Tubogas line went for gold this year in two single wrap Serpenti models in 18-carat yellow-gold model and two-tone steel and 18-carat yellow gold. The line had predominately focused on yellow-gold previously, although a double curved yellow-gold Tubogas did exist in the lineup and it is sold out. “Today, the yellow-gold trend is very, very strong,” said Buonamassa Stiglioni. “It’s massive. A few years ago it was just in some regions, but today we receive requests for yellow-gold from many countries.” Indeed, women have been flocking more towards yellow gold in recent years and the version above left likely won’t be available for long if the approx. $58,000 double strap version is already out of stock.
Price: Yellow gold, approx. $46,100; Two-tone, approx. $18,100
ZENITH
Defy Skyline
Zenith Defy Skyline Zenith
Following the limited-edition release of its Revival Defy A3642 heritage piece last week, Zenith homed in on dial design for its more accessible Defy Skyline range. Drawing inspiration from the night sky above the manufacture, just like its founder, Georges-Favre Jacot, did 157 years ago, the dial features an engraved star-studded texture in a sunburst finish set within an octagonal case, inspired by the earliest Defy from 1969 on which the Revival A3642 is based, and topped off with a 12-sided bezel.
Powered by the automatic El Primero 3620 movement, which takes cues from the El Primero 3600 1/10th of a second chronograph, the Defy Skyline collection features a 1/10th of a second hand, which beats at 5 HZ and comes with a stop-second mechanism for a precise setting of the time. The bi-directional rotor, visible through the caseback, has also been fashioned in a star motif and delivers 60 hours of power reserve.
The steel 41 mm watches will, no doubt, draw comparisons to Audemars Piguet’s icon—the Royal Oak, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year after its debut in 1972. But at $12,200 a pop, they are far more affordable, offering a similar look at a, relatively speaking, palatable price. And as an added bonus, you can also switch out the bracelet for a rubber strap, also adorned with star pattern, which is offered in blue and black to their corresponding dial colors or olive-green for the silver-dial version. All can be easily swapped without the use of tools thanks to a quick strap-change mechanism.
Price: $12,200
Defy Extreme Carbon
Zenith Defy Extreme Carbon Zenith
At 45 by 15.4mm this is the heftiest watch of Zenith’s 2022 debuts thus far. But it’s also incredibly light thanks to its layered carbon fibre case and marks the first time a Defy Extreme model has been made in the material. And, inside, it houses the fastest chronograph movement on the market with time measurements at 1/100th of a second and two escapements operating at 36,000 VpH (5Hz) for the hours and minutes and minutes at the chronograph function operating at 360,000 VpH (50 Hz). It’s a full package sports watch and the perfect mascot for the next season of Extreme E racing, of which Zenith is the official timekeeper, which will kick off this February with the Desert X Prix in Saudi Arabia. The partnership means you can expect more limited-edition Defy Extreme watches tied to the Extreme E races in the future.
The watch comes on a black leather strap with a titanium triple folding clasp but can be swapped out for a black velcro version or a red rubber strap. The latter will highlight the colourful dial markers including the 1/100th of a second chronograph scale in bright yellow, the chronograph counters in bright blue, green and white and hits of red in the power reserve indicator—all of which, naturally, mimic the colour schemes of the Extreme E’s “X Prix.”
Fortunately, you won’t have to race to your local AD to claim your stake on one as the Defy Extreme Carbon will not be a limited edition, giving you more time to deliberate on its five-figure price tag.
Price: $36,100
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Car of the Year
Always an unmissable highlight of the automotive calendar, Robb Report ANZ’s annual motoring awards set a new benchmark among glorious Gold Coast tarmac.
Over two unforgettable days, our motoring sages and VIP guests embarked on an exhilarating journey from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane and back again—traversing an irresistible selection of terrain in our exotic rides, from deserted rainforest-lined b-roads to testing mountain switchbacks with dizzying—sometimes heart-in-mouth—views over the southern Queensland peninsula. And as befitting an event starring the crème de la crème of auto marques, we did so while savouring the best in luxury and gastronomy—capped off with an extraordinary superyacht experience at Sanctuary Cove.
The ten contenders for the Car of the Year were not the only dream machines on show. The first day’s adventure kicked off at the Langham Hotel and included a midday pit stop at the glorious Beechmont Estate, where our fleet of drivers were greeted by a stunning array of vintage cars exhibited in a concours d’elegance-style display.
The sumptuous feast for the eyes on offer at Beechmont, a quaint country village located between the Lamington Plateau and Tamborine Mountain, was followed by a meal for the ages prepared by executive chefs Chris and Alex Norman at the property’s hatted restaurant, The Paddock.
Then, itching to remount our steeds, it was time to hit the road again, with our drivers—all sporting Onitsuka Tiger’s new driving shoes—hightailing it to Brisbane and The Calile Hotel, a property which has been scooping accolades like Jay Leno collects supercars.
After some much needed relaxation by the pool, that evening the drivers and press were joined by local luminaries in the hotel’s private dining room. Over an extravagant banquet they got to compare notes on marvels of engineering and design that they’d had the chance to pilot all day. They were also treated to a showcase of spectacular Jacob & Co. timepieces and Hardy Brothers jewellery and an elegant sufficiency of 40-year Glenfiddich whiskey served in gold cups worth $60,000 a pop. It made for animated discussions and more than a little impromptu shopping.
And did we mention the luxury yacht experience? After a full itinerary of adventures on the road, the day ended with an invigorating late-afternoon of luxuriating aboard two new Riviera Yacht releases—the 6800 Sport Yacht and the 585 SUV—where our intrepid drivers and assorted press got to literally and figuratively take their hands off the wheel and make a case for their car of the year. As the forthcoming pages attest, they were more than spoiled for choice. But who would take centre stage on the winners’ podium?
OVERALL WINNER
BEST SPORTS CAR
BEST LUXURY HYBRID
BEST PERFORMANCE SUPERCAR
BEST ROADSTER
BEST CAR DESIGN
BEST ELECTRIC PERFORMANCE CAR
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Cruise along to robbreport.com.au/events for more supercars and luxury motoring.
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How to Use Your Dress Watch to Nail Casual Style This Fall
The dress watch is back and more laid-back than ever. Here’s how to rock your Cartier and Piaget pieces with casual looks
After the seemingly never-ending hype around steel sports watches, dress watches have been making a comeback. But it’s not just the average 42 mm dress watch that’s sparking interest (although, those too, are in the running), but also funky vintage diamond-accented timepieces or small-sized, almost feminine pieces are trending. Recently, actor Paul Mescal was spotted on the red carpet of the Annual Academy Museum Gala wearing a Cartier Tank Mini with his tux, while sports legend Dwyane Wade wore a 28 mm diamond Tiffany & Co. Eternity watch with his black tie ensemble to the same event. While these guys were wearing dress watches in their intended setting, here we show you how to make a dress watch work for casual weekend wear too.
Try dabbling in unexpected pairings like an army green Ghiaia safari jacket with a vintage Chopard Happy Diamonds timepiece or Breguet Classique Ref. 7147 (the ultimate dressy timekeeper) with a Louis Vuitton sweatsuit and a Brioni overcoat. Anything goes these days and the more unexpected the timepiece, the stronger the statement. It’s good news all around—for your wardrobe and your investments in the vault.
Above: Blancpain 39.7 mm Villeret Ultraplate in 18-karat red gold, $69,675; Tod’s faux-shearling and denim jacket, $5,6859; Tom Ford cashmere and silk turtleneck, $2,535.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MATALLINA. WATCH EDITOR, PAIGE REDDINGER. FASHION DIRECTOR, ALEX BADIA. STYLE EDITOR, NAOMI ROUGEAU.
Jaeger-LeCoultre 40 mm Reverso One Duetto Jewellery in 18-karat pink gold and diamonds, $79,560. Right: Chopard 32 mm vintage Happy Diamonds in 18-karat white gold and diamonds, $19,930, analogshift.com; Ghiaia cotton safari jacket, $1,426; Eton cotton T-shirt, 358; Hermès denim trousers, $1,674.
Audemars Piguet 34 mm vintage automatic ultrathin watch in 18-karat white gold and diamonds, $9,300, classicwatchny.com. Right: Cartier 41.4 mm Tortue in platinum, $35,600, limited to 200; Gabriela Hearst hand-knit cashmere sweater, $2,500; Officine Générale cotton-poplin shirt, $315.
Breguet 40 mm Classique Ref. 7147 in 18-karat white gold, $37,468; Brioni wool and cashmere overcoat, $12,233, and silk knit crewneck sweater, $2,224; Louis Vuitton wool track pants, $2,120, and wool hooded jacket, $5,002. Right: Patek Philippe 39 mm Calatrava Ref. 6119R-001 in 18-karat rose gold, $52,791.
Piaget 45 mm Andy Warhol in 18-karat rose gold, $69,198. Right: Rolex 29 mm vintage King Midas Ref. 4342 in 18-karat yellow gold, $28,301, classicwatchny.com; Brunello Cucinelli denim shirt, $1,586; Tom Ford cotton chinos, $1,259; Berluti leather belt, $1,132.
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Fair Play
Pioneering Australian fashionista Andrew Doyle is on a mission to build the world’s finest—and most responsible—knitwear brand.
Some brand stories come so swathed in lashings of romance, it’s hard to know where to begin. Ask Andrew Doyle, founder of luxury knitwear brand Formehri, and he’ll tell you that the true essence of his company lies in its name— or, rather, its namesake: his wife, Mehri.
“The story of our brand is really the story of our family,” Doyle says. The two now have three children, having met in their twenties while working for the same company. “We were on our honeymoon, I think, 11 years ago, and she made a passing comment that it was her dream to live in the south of France. I don’t know why, but I decided there and then that I was going to make it happen for her.”
Now, Doyle splits his time jet-setting between Monaco and Sydney, but he was born and raised among the more prosaic pastures of Canberra, working for much of his twenties and thirties building a successful finance recruitment company. Having taken an interest in menswear from an early age, he spent most of that time moonlighting as one of the internet’s OG menswear bloggers under the moniker Timeless Man. The site gravitated towards covering smaller, artisanal producers, eschewing big brands and splashy catwalk shows in favour of those making bespoke garments and accessories with an emphasis on quality over quantity.
“I did it for free for a decade,” he recalls. “I was always drawn to craftspeople who were creating something authentic and product driven. I would save up my money, go have these people make me a jacket and write about the process. I just found it so interesting. Pretty soon I started thinking that I’d love to do this myself.”
One would expect a chance meeting in, say, Paris or Florence to be the scenario in which Doyle got his look-in. Rather, it was on a dusty salt flat in Bolivia where, while on holiday with his wife, an opportunity presented itself to him. There, taking in the near-overwhelming silence of the Salar de Uyuni, he was reminded of nearby farmers raising vicuña: a pint-sized relative of the Alpaca prized for its ultrafine wool.
“I’d first learned about vicuña some years earlier,” Doyle says. “A contact of mine had paid John Cutler something like $50,000 to make a vicuña overcoat for him, so once I got back to La Paz I asked him to put me in touch with the local producers here.” Vicuña wool, for the uninitiated, is among the most prized fabrics in the world, orders of magnitude lighter and finer than merino or cashmere. Endemic to remote, high-altitude plateaus throughout the Andes, most vicuña are wild-farmed and, being slow-growing, hand-sheared just once every three years. Most fleeces are bought in bulk by a well-known luxury knitwear brand that, for reasons that will soon become apparent, shall remain nameless.
Back in the Bolivian capital, Doyle met with someone representing the nation’s rural community of vicuña farmers. There, he learned of the mass exploitation taking place, not just in Bolivia but across other South American countries. Despite the price of vicuña garments steadily rising, the wholesale prices paid to producers for their wool has dropped by a third in the last decade—an issue that, for those inclined to do a quick Google search, has seen our nameless brand hauled in front of a US Congressional caucus.
“They’re pretty seriously impoverished,” says Doyle. “They’re very isolated. They’re up on this plateau, really struggling day to day. Meanwhile these big brands are buying up the bulk of the wool—which is not cheap—and yet the farmers are seeing almost none of the profits. That’s when all the pieces came together for Mehri and me. We said: ‘This is it.’”
“I think it was even the next day,” he continues, “I got back in touch with them and said: ‘What if we start a company that can make the finest product in the world and we’ll give you 10 percent of everything we make in profit?’ And they just said, ‘That’s exactly what we’ve been looking for.’ As the story evolved, I felt 10 percent wasn’t enough. So now we reserve 10 percent for communities in South America, and then another 10 percent for a range of charities around both Monaco [where Andrew Doyle has a factory] and Africa, with a focus on people who really need it.”
This is, of course, all just empty talk without the product to back it up. And while Formehri is still very much a brand in its larval stage, the quality of its garments is rapidly garnering acclaim. The brand’s core range revolves around sweaters and cardigans, spun at a family-owned mill in Bologna and hand-finished in Monaco—made to order and priced accordingly. Formehri’s sweaters start at around $7,500, its shawl-neck cardigans tipping the fiscal scales at around $21,900.
Already, this plucky upstart is turning heads in the right circles. The brand recently completed a trunk show at London’s Baudoin & Lange and has recently begun a residency at famed Parisian tailors Camps de Luca. “We met Andrew many years ago as a client,” founder Julien De Luca tells us. “The philosophy behind Formehri is very similar to our own vision of craftsmanship. Formehri understands craftsmanship, patience and the time necessary to create not just a garment, but a story and a distinct moment behind each piece. Formehri goes far beyond a brand—it comes from a man truly dedicated to excellence.”
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Overall Winner: Rolls-Royce Spectre
The marque’s first fully electric ultra-luxury coupe takes our top honour for the year.
Neither the Honourable Charles Rolls nor Sir Henry Royce were car guys, not initially anyway. First and foremost, they were electricity men, apostles of the current. The former’s obsession flowered early; aged nine, the young Brit was already toying with this burgeoning fin de siecle phenomenon, mounting electrical rigs at the family’s ancestral pile in Wales. At the same time, a grown-up Royce was busy earning his entrepreneurial chops, heading a thriving enterprise in Manchester that made small domestic appliances—doorbells, lamps, fuses and the like.
It is, then, little wonder the pair were early electric-car adopters, experimenting with the energy after launching their nascent automobile company in 1904. Though electricity eventually lost out to combustion in the arm-wrestle for early-20th-century tech supremacy, anyone who has ever sat in or steered the Rolls-Royce Spectre—the marque’s first fully electric ultra-luxury coupe—will tell you that the 120 years it has taken for the company to disrupt the entire industry has been worth the wait. Revenge is sweet. And silent.
Rolls-Royce’s “magic carpet ride” has been synonymous with the brand since debuting in 2003’s Phantom VII, but the sensation of deep-space-like serenity has been compounded to the nth degree in the absence of oil power (though, admittedly, few Rolls-Royces throughout history can be described as rowdy). On occasion, one almost feels transcendentally detached from the current time dimension, as the Planar Suspension System’s cameras scan tarmac conditions ahead—adjusting settings in real time to proffer maximum comfort—and the vehicle’s aerodynamic silhouette makes a quiet mockery of wind resistance and other established laws of physics.
Factor in that other meditative proprietary feature, the Starlight Headliner, which projects 4,796 fibre-optic stars onto the roof and two doors, and before long the Spectre is morphing into something beyond a mere automobile—echoes of a life-affirming business-class-jet flight, flashes of sub-orbital-spacecraft awe.
Other determinants tipped the balance in the Spectre’s favour when the time came for our judges to nail their sails to the mast: the cabin’s handcrafted wood, leather and metal detailing; the optional Champagne Chest for pure, unabashed extravagance of it all; and those 23-inch wheels, the first time Rolls has fitted this size to a coupe since 1920s, lend the vehicle an air of Great Gatsby meets late-’90s hip-hop cool.
Most of all, however, the Spectre takes centre position on this year’s podium for broader, existential reasons. Because when the history of post-Prius electric motoring is eventually written, the production of this EV will surely be recognised as a hill-cresting moment in technology, a landmark in modern engineering, the exact point when the power struggle between electricity and combustion erred towards the new-but-old energy. The best Rolls-Royce ever? Maybe. The best EV ever? You know it.
So, Spectre: take the podium, wear the wreath, pop the Dom P—the world is yours.
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Best Car Design: Maserati Gran Turismo
A sculpted, long-hooded fastback designed to turn heads.
In Italy, beauty is not optional, it is demanded. This is a nation whose fashion houses treat clothing as high art; a people to whom hand-rolling individual pasta pieces into decorative shapes is an artisanal obsession; a country that employs polizia who’ve been plucked straight from the Milanese catwalks… or that is how it seems.
Cars are, of course, not immune from Italy’s rat-race of beautification, and to stand out in the company of auto aestheticians like Ferrari, Lamborghini and Alfa Romeo is no cinch—and yet this year Maserati managed to do so with the Gran Turismo, a sculpted, long-hooded fastback (hand-built in the motherland, natch) that will keep Modena’s chiropractors minted for the model’s life term, given how many unprepared Tuscan neck muscles will be craning as this peach homes sashays by.
While surface-level joy can be had swooning at the Gran Turismo, the allure runs deeper than just elegant lines and sexy rims. The interior hosts a quiet riot of high-end materials—leather, carbon fibre, Alcantara—which collude to create the refined cabin tableau.
Comeliness aside, it would be churlish, and vaguely vacuous, not to mention what a beguilling motor this Maserati is. Rivals in the GT firmament may flex more raw power, but few will be able clock the big testosterone numbers with such composure—like a manicured Donna di Classe whose immaculately quaffed hair refuses to be ruffled in the wind. Even so, its 0-100 km/h sprint time of 2.7 seconds stands as one of the best in class.
Ultimately, there is good reason why grand tourer cars tend to be the purest expression of automotive beauty: their modus operandi is delivering long, comfortable, cross-country journeys with panache—and no one wants to squander life’s precious hours in an ugly car, not least an Italian.
The Numbers (Trofeo model)
Engine: 3.0-litre Nettuno twin-turbo V6
Power: 410 kW
Torque: 650 Nm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Acceleration (0-100 km/h): 3.5 seconds
Top speed: 320 km/h
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