Code Blue: IWC Adds a New Dial Color to the Ingenieur Automatic 40 Repertoire

The International Watch Company is ending 2024 on a high note. First, the brand’s most recent tour de force, the Portugieser Eternal Calendar, took the Aiguille d’Or at the 2024 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève in November.

Now, in December, the Schaffhausen-based brand has announced a little holiday surprise for the fans: a new Ingenieur Automatic 40 featuring a bold and sophisticated blue dial.

The brand claims on its website that IWC was one of the first Swiss luxury watchmakers to produce references with blue dials (the Ingenieur Automatic and the Yacht Club Automatic, both released in 1967). However, even if this claim has many qualifiers, the brand has legitimately produced some of the most beautiful blue dials in horological history.

Additionally, since 1967, there have been more than 120 references across its six watch families to sport blue dials, including such legends as 1967’s Ingenieur Automatic (Ref. 866 AD), the 1994 Pilot’s Watch Mark XII (Ref. IW324107), and the 1999 Pilot’s Watch UTC (Ref. IW325103).
 

For a spell, the brand only paired blue dials with platinum cases. However, over time, IWC relaxed this policy and has paired these blue faces with gold, stainless steel, and ceramic cases. And that brings us to this year’s model.

There’s more to this Ingenieur Automatic 40 (Ref. IW328907) than a new blue hue. The timepiece is also a riff on the aesthetic codes of Gérald Genta’s original Ingenieur SL from the 1970s.

In 2023, IWC revamped the Ingenieur Automatic with many of Genta’s sporty signatures, including the bezel with five functional screws, an integrated bracelet, and the model’s unique dial pattern. Designers also tweaked the silhouette to make the watch more friendly for a wider variety of wrists with a more refined 40mm case size and the integrated H-link bracelet with butterfly folding clasp.
 

The 2023 reintroduction of the Ingenieur Automatic 40 was presented in one titanium and three stainless steel versions with a black, silver-plated, or aqua dial.

For 2024, the Maison now connects the Genta design story and the contemporary need for innovation in comfort by bringing IWC blue to the collection.

Inside the updated Ingenieur Automatic 40 stainless steel case beats the IWC-manufactured, self-winding 32111 calibre with a five-day power reserve. And in another nod to IWC’s heritage, this movement employs the double pawl winding system devised by Albert Pellaton, the Schaffhausen-based company’s mid-century Technical Director.
 

Patented in 1950, this ingenious system uses a heart-shaped, bearing-mounted disc instead of putting a ball bearing or cog at the center of the rotor to channel the rotor’s revolutions into the motion of a rocking bar. The bar’s energy is then transmitted to the winding wheel via two pawls: one cranks the wheel while the other glides over the top of it until the roles are reversed.
 

Finally, a soft-iron inner case also protects the mechanism from the effects of magnetic fields.