A classic complication in a unconventional position.
Franck Muller's barrel-shaped Cintrée Curvex looks familiar now, but that wasn’t the case when the watch debuted in the luxury watch market. The collection's innovative case has since become part of the company’s signature style, and has also served as a blank canvass for experimenting with elite complications.
It has already framed Skeleton watches with openworked movements, Perpetual Calendars, Grande Date watches with exposed stepped wheels for their big date display, as well as chronograph models. The 2021 Grand Central Tourbillon ticks off another box, with the tourbillon now the centerpiece of its movement enclosed in a Cintrée Curvex case.
The brand's engineers made it perfectly clear which dynamic complication plays the starring role by placing the tourbillon bang smack in the middle of the dial. The hour and minute hands of the Grand Central model are visually peripheral to the tourbillon as a result. Another change made was to extend the protective sapphire crystal over the dial to almost reach the lugs.
That focuses as much attention as possible on the face decorated with two kind of ornamental patterns (apart from versions with black dials, which sport one geometrical pattern). The exquisite guilloché is covered with 20 layers of transparent lacquer to make the surface shine extra bright.
While the Cintrée Curvex Skeleton and Perpetual Calendar watches with were powered by manually wound movements, a self-winding movement has been selected for the Grand Central collection's new watch. The case measuring 58.70 × 40.16 × 7.73 mm houses the FM CX-40-T-CTR Caliber equipped with a micro-rotor which generates enough energy to ensure four days of automatic winding.
The movement consists of 313 parts and runs at a frequency of 18,000 vph. Franck Muller has remained true to the brand's style with the Cintrée Curvex case and recognizable Arabic numerals, but that hasn't stopped the brand's image from gradually evolving both visually and in terms of design.