Why TAG's linear V4 is a revolution

As anyone who's ever visited will attest, you spend a lot of time at the annual Baselworld enjoy and jewellery fair being shown what an industrial designer once described to me as "the answer to a question that hasn't been asked".

It's a perennial problem amongst designers - challenged to produce something new, different and above all else, marketable, they occasionally let their imaginations run wild and return with something, properly, something that no one wants, needs nor indeed asked for.

A view made from remnants in the Titanic? In excess of here, sir. A enjoy that synchronises time with the world's great shopping strips? I thought you'd never ask. A watch which is accurate to within five minutes that costs more than a quarter of a million pounds? We've just the thing...

So it takes something extraordinary to remain exactly that - extraordinary - and yet pass the all-important "question answered" test. Such a observe, on its unveiling in 2004 in concept form, was the TAG Heuer Monaco V4.

Anyone familiar using the brand's totemic Monaco chronograph won't be floored by the case shape, but peer a little closer and there, looking like the cylinders beneath the chassis of an open-worked super car are the very first inklings of a horological revolution: four spring barrels banked in pairs on either side with the world's initial linear mass self-winding mechanism.

But look closer still and you'll detect the real breakthrough: tiny, follicle-thin polyester bands that transfer energy without the need for a traditional gear train. These, TAG Heuer believes, are the answer to the age-old problems of stability and reliability, themselves a corollary of the tension and friction - on which all timepieces rely - that have undermined mechanical observe design since its inception more than two centuries ago.

Suffice it to say it's taken five years of solid testing to bring the first 150 retail models to market - just in time for the brand's 150-year anniversary in 2010. And for a look at company that prides itself on its ability to innovate on demand again and again and again, you can guarantee that timing was no happy accident.

But make no mistake: inspired by the brand's close working relationship with Mercedes-Benz (not to mention its own background in sports timing) using the Monaco V4, TAG Heuer has brought to market a new approach to timekeeping that many thought unattainable at the time of its launch back in 2004.

Please keep the address reproduced:Watch Manual