Porsche Design custom-built Timepieces: About The Courage to be Unique

Even though most collectors still think primarily of automobiles when it comes to unique Porsche models, Porsche Design wristwatches are now naturally part of the picture. A review and outlook on the most ambitious and successful customisation programme in the entire Swiss watch industry named custom-built Timepieces. Don’t believe it? Then you really need to read on.

To understand where the luxury market is heading, you should ask those who already have (or had) everything, not those who are just discovering luxury for themselves. It is no longer a secret that many top collectors are now tending to turn away from brands that primarily symbolise – at various levels – having made it: no one forgets their first Rolex, and certainly no one in the collector’s life forgets their first Patek Philippe Nautilus. There’s no question about it: these brands are great and embody everything the watch industry stands for today: status, precision, perfection, innovation and longevity. Please don’t get me wrong, but there’s one thing you can’t achieve with the industry’s big hype models alone: being perceived as a connoisseur today.

Collectors value individuality

It is no coincidence that niche brands, some with designs that take some getting used to, so-called independents such as MB&F, Urwerk and F.P. Journe, are popular with elite collectors. Why? It’s not just about low production numbers, but collectors are primarily interested in being perceived as individuals and expressing their long-cultivated expertise in a special way.

The luxury market is transparent

At the same time, the luxury watch market has become extremely transparent: today, anyone can ask Chat-GPT online about the most important, most stable watches in terms of value, or those that are hardest to obtain. The rest is a question of budget. And in a world where the number of wealthy people is growing by over 6 per cent every year (as a recent study by CapGemini shows), this budget is also growing steadily, so that coveted watches on the second-hand market could be bought immediately despite high prices without any contacts to dealers or even detailed connoisseurship.

No collector wants to be the tenth person at a party who everyone else is staring at because of their status watch (or, to be honest, because of its popularity and resale value, which means it might get stolen on the way home). Again, don’t get me wrong: would a collector with a passion for major Swiss watch brands refrain from buying a special model from these brands for this reason? Probably not, if only because these people usually still find something that could refine and complement their existing collections of these brands. But it is often no longer the highest priority, as it perhaps was five or ten years ago.

The greatest luxury: the individual wristwatch

But what is the answer to this new form of luxury arbitrariness with its tendency towards interchangeability? It’s simple: the future of luxury belongs to the individual product. To be honest, this is not a major revelation, because it has always been the greatest luxury. It has always been the ultimate luxury to own something that only exists once. You only have to look at the record results of watch auctions: a prominent wearer such as actor Paul Newman turns a Rolex Daytona with a tropical dial, reference 6239, of which 2,000 to 3,000 were built, into the most valuable chronograph in the world (here is our report). In art, this is a matter of course; there is only one Mona Lisa. In watchmaking, this would mean ‘batch size 1’, a technical term from the manufacturing industry.

Credit © Phillips

Why Porsche Design builds customised watches

But no one goes to this expense because one-off production and series production are fundamentally contradictory. With one exception: which brings us to Porsche Design custom-built timepieces. What do Porsche and Porsche Design have to do with individual luxury with their Swiss watch manufacture? Well, every Porsche 911 driver knows that individuality has long been a priority for the sports car manufacturer from Zuffenhausen. Porsche has been catering to unusual customer requests since the early 1950s, when the repair department at the main factory in Zuffenhausen began accepting special orders. It started with modifications to the engine, chassis and brakes for customers who were active in racing at the time. With the establishment of the customer sports department, it was not long before the ‘Special Requests’ department was introduced in 1978, which in 1986 became the ‘Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur’ department, which is still successful today. Today, the industry’s most elaborate customisation programme includes exclusive special series and valuable one-off models: most recently, for example, a 911 Speedster was created as a special request factory one-off for Italian Speedster collector and coffee machine designer Luca Trazzi.

It all began in 2018 with the Chronograph 911 Turbo S Exclusive Series. At that time, Porsche Design was breaking new ground. As the only car manufacturer with its own Swiss watch factory, customers were able to order a wristwatch chronograph limited to the same number of pieces as the limited edition vehicle for the first time.

For eight years now, Porsche Design, together with its in-house manufacture in Solothurn, Switzerland, has been immortalising the rarest and most sought-after vehicle models in matching and equally rare wristwatches for their drivers. Nineteen models have been created to date, the latest being the limited edition of 90 pieces of the Porsche 911 GT3 with a special Chronograph 1.

A unique manufacturing process: customised wristwatches – in series production

But that is only one aspect. To make these watches possible in the first place, Porsche Design not only established its own watch manufacturing facility in Switzerland, but also introduced a manufacturing process that, for the first time ever, incorporated processes from automotive engineering into the production of exclusive Swiss wristwatches.

A look back: five years of Porsche Design custom-built timepieces

The Porsche Design Custombuilt Timepieces programme has been in existence for five years now, offering Porsche drivers, as well as fans and enthusiasts of individual watches, the opportunity to design their own personal ‘sports car for the wrist’ for the first time, apart from grandfather clocks. The effort involved is enormous. In terms of appearance alone, the only thing in the Swiss watch industry that comes close is the online configurator programmed for Rolex on its homepage. However, Rolex does not offer 800 million customisation options. Please also read the latest interview with the CEO of Porsche Design Timepieces Manufaktur and the CEO of MHP, the developer of the online configurator.

Five years is a good time to look back at the Porsche Design custom-built timepieces programme and how it has developed. Yes, it still flies a little under the radar: if you’ve never heard of it, don’t be surprised. But since Porsche Design currently only manufactures around 5,000 watches a year, the brand cannot be that well known, because even Patek Philippe manufactures ten times as many watches and Rolex 200 times as many. Porsche Design Timepieces is a small manufacturer that, despite its large parent company, has a smaller marketing budget and yet clearly feels comfortable in its niche. At the same time, its low-key approach also means exclusivity and peace from the free riders of any hype, as we mentioned at the beginning.

Small quantities, yet great success

Even though quantities are still small at present, the best indicator of the success of any watch range is the fact that a manufacturer is expanding production: in autumn 2025, Porsche Design Timepieces AG moved into a completely new manufacturing facility in Grenchen, Switzerland, in order to cope with demand and anticipated growth. In fact, 70 per cent of all Porsche Design watches sold today come from the custom-built Timepieces range, even though most watch collectors may not even be familiar with the watch range.

To date, many watch collectors still associate Porsche Design primarily with the famous Chronograph 1, the world’s first black series wristwatch, which was created in 1972 by Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, designer of the Porsche 911 and founder of Porsche Design. We have highlighted its unique history in a detailed report. Numerous special editions have been released since its relaunch on its 50th anniversary.

Customised sports chronographs – not just for Porsche drivers

Many watch enthusiasts may assume that Porsche Design custom-built timepieces are merely accessories to complement sports cars. A luxury product that is meaningless without ownership of the corresponding vehicle, which is naturally not the case. Anyone can configure their own personal Porsche for their wrist here, provided they like the brand identity of Porsche and Porsche Design, the Porsche subsidiary that unites an entire lifestyle universe and has made design history many times over, from sports shoes and clothing to iconic sunglasses.

Two identical watches? Almost impossible!

Let’s return to the original question. Porsche Design is in pole position, if only because the collectors’ market is moving towards individuality, both in terms of cars and watches. Finding two Porsche Design customers who have configured identical watches is extremely unlikely: if you really want to push the limits, the Porsche configurator offers over 800 million possibilities for designing your Porsche Design timepiece, down to the detail of the stitching on the leather strap or the look of the winding rotor of the movement.

Porsche Design custom-built timepieces do not only use original Porsche materials: in addition to the identical vehicle leather for the strap, there are 142 precisely reproduced paint colours from all 142 Porsche colour shades. The customisable rim winding rotor is the most technically sophisticated element of the timepiece: a 1:22 scale version of the original Porsche 911 rims, it is manufactured to an accuracy of up to five thousandths of a millimetre.

Initially, only a chronograph with a COSC-certified automatic movement (calibre 01.100) was available, but in 2024, the Globetimer became the second model that could be customised: this innovative world time watch, also COSC-certified, features the Porsche Design calibre 04.110 movement and allows a second time zone to be displayed. It has been part of the Porsche Design watch collection as a series watch since 2019. The local time display can be conveniently adjusted in 1-hour increments without losing the current time display, including automatic adaptation of the date display – in both directions. The pushers familiar from chronographs are used here for the forward and backward functions, making adjustment via the crown unnecessary. The date is displayed as a pointer date around the dial. Here, too, the colour selection for the ring around the dial includes not only all current exterior colours of the Porsche 911 and Porsche Cayenne, but also the iconic and historic colours of the Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur’s ‘Colour of Your Choice’ programme.

Individualisation is part of Porsche Design’s design DNA

In a world where many watch brands are quick to jump on colour trends, colour customisation is part of Porsche Design watches’ DNA. Playing around with different coloured leather straps is also child’s play: the straps can be quickly changed thanks to a quick-change system, and ordering additional leather straps in custom colours is no problem at Porsche Design.

Finally available for all Porsche models

Anyone who thinks that 5,000 watches is a bit low for a success story needs to understand the following: until this summer, Porsche Design only offered the custom-built timepieces to match the 911 model and only in a few key markets worldwide, including Germany and the USA. Anyone familiar with the vehicle production figures knows that Porsche built around 50,000 911s in 2025, but around 230,000 other vehicles, primarily SUVs. The old manufacturing headquarters in Solothurn simply did not have the production capacity to expand the range or serve additional markets. This will change in 2026 with the new factory in Grenchen, incidentally the former headquarters of Eterna, the manufacturer that produced Porsche Design watches until shortly after the turn of the millennium.

One of the most important innovations in 2025 is therefore the expansion of the custom-built timepiece programme to include the Cayenne model, a luxury SUV. And this much can be revealed for 2026: with the new manufacturing facility, nothing stands in the way of expanding to all other Porsche models, i.e. the Macan, also an SUV and a bestseller from Porsche, the four-door Panamera coupé, the all-electric Taycan sports car and, in future, the 718 roadster. This will greatly expand the customer base.

Global rollout in new markets is planned

Many people will not yet be familiar with the programme because it is only now being gradually rolled out worldwide. Initially, it was only available in four countries (Germany, USA, UK, Switzerland) because specialist consultants had to be trained at Porsche centres to guide customers through the configuration process. Incidentally, this takes place in special ‘lounges’ at the car dealerships.

One of the best online configurators for watches

Anyone who has visited the configurator in the past should give it another try. It has been fundamentally improved – both technically and visually. The new Porsche Design watch configurator is the result of close collaboration between Porsche Design and the management and IT consultancy MHP. Together, the two Porsche subsidiaries have fundamentally redeveloped the configurator to create a unique user experience. It now offers even more detailed and realistic representations of personalised timepieces and a more intuitive user interface.

Anyone who tests the new configurator will quickly understand why expanding it to all Porsche and luxury markets is not so easy. Of course, it has to be adapted locally, not only in terms of languages and currencies. Employees at Porsche Centres, an important sales channel, need to be trained. With Porsche in its name, the subsidiary simply wants to ensure that all areas, right down to watch servicing, are well covered by the dealer. After entering the Spanish and Portuguese markets at the end of 2024, this year saw the addition of the strong Porsche market in Japan and, in Eastern Europe, Poland, a populous country with a growing middle and upper class with high purchasing power and an affinity for lifestyle. Markets such as China, overseas and other growth markets, which account for around half of all Porsche vehicle orders, are not yet included, but are definitely planned for the future.

The first exclusive Pantone colour: Turbonit

Porsche Design is also breaking new ground in terms of colour and technical customisation options: with the launch of the Porsche 911 Turbo S, the Chronograph 911 Turbo S with COSC-certified flyback chronograph calibre, previously reserved for buyers of exclusive series such as the GT3, is now available in the series for the first time. In the Turbo S model, Porsche Design introduces a colour innovation with the metallic grey tone ‘Turbonit’, which subtly gives the Turbo watch models a visual signature. The colour was developed in close cooperation with colour system expert Pantone and marks a first in automotive colour development: for the first time, an exclusive colour has been created specifically for a vehicle manufacturer, which will shape the appearance of Porsche’s Turbo derivatives from the end of 2023.

We will be hearing more about Porsche Design custom-built timepieces

Conclusion: You don’t have to be a Porsche driver to realise that this chapter in watchmaking history will set a precedent. It is clear that custom-built timepieces have their roots in the individualisation of a personal dream Porsche. This justification alone will ensure their success. From a purely technical point of view, the Porsche Design custom-built timepiece programme is certainly one of the most exciting chapters in recent watch history in terms of individualisation. No other car or watch manufacturer has set out to tackle such a task, even though the signs of the times clearly point towards completely individualised one-off pieces. Of course, there are some watch manufacturers that offer elaborate one-off pieces. However, the art lies in creating them in larger quantities once collectors have taken the bait.

The prices for the fully customised watches are fair

The classic Chronograph 1 in the All Black version serves as a benchmark here: it costs €8,950 at Porsche Design. In contrast, Porsche Design Custom Built Timepieces start at £5,950. This cost price is the same regardless of whether it is the chronograph or the Globetimer world time watch. However, if you take full advantage of all the customisation options currently available, the maximum purchase price is £12,350. Even this maximum price is still in line with comparable manufacturer models for a titanium chronograph. For a unique wristwatch in a batch size of 1, including personal laser engraving on the edge of the sapphire crystal case back and on the watch box, this is still not really excessive. It is highly doubtful whether Porsche Design would have been able to realise this project at these prices without the backing of its parent company. Anyone who is looking beyond the big watch brands in the future, enjoys sports and values individuality should at least take a look at the Porsche configurator. The configuration can be saved for future reference.

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