Leveling a tiny, wearable, quietly ticking object like a wristwatch with a car — usually a supercar, hypercar, or racing car — remains one of the few truly fearsome challenges for watchmakers. Roger Dubuis, if anyone, has a full inventory of tools to produce watches that won’t have to accept defeat, and it has thrown everything and then some at the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph Lamborghini Verde Mantis watch (including a preposterous name) so that it can live up to the Lamborghini SC63 race car that inspired it.
First, the car, just so that we understand the scale of this undertaking. The Lamborghini SC63 is an LMDh sports prototype racing car — a Le Mans Daytona hypercar, to be specific. Any of those words is a giant, flashing warning sign when it comes to cars. Put them all together, and you end up with a 671-horsepower machine that weighs in at just over a ton (2,271lbs) and sounds like how one would imagine the birth of a medium-size star does — listen here, if you have any doubts. We’ll add in a whisper that Cadillac has Lamborghini licked on this front.
With all that noted, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that Roger Dubuis pulled no punches on the Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph Lamborghini Verde Mantis watch, making up for a lack of sound with loud (very loud) aesthetics. The watch measures 45mm wide, a Big Mac-esque 17.13mm thick, and although there are no official lug-to-lug specs, you can expect those triple lugs and scalloped straps to be as much of an overkill on many wrist sizes as the SC63 would be on any public highway.
Overall functionality is not too bad, as you do get more or less easy-to-find hour and minute markers, and even a fixed bezel with large decimal readouts. The tachymeter scale has been relegated to a flange ring around the largely non-existent dial, with readouts starting from 500 in a very Lamborghini-ish manner of optimism and overstatement. Cool. The main hands are openworked, which remains a Roger Dubuis trait for one, and an Achilles heel for two, as it rather efficiently camouflages the hands over what is a very busy backdrop characterized by largely similar shapes. The hand design is so compromised it is almost as though it was done on purpose, diverting attention away from plebeian matters such as the time and on to more flamboyant horological executions.
Speaking of those, the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph Lamborghini Verde Mantis watch is a Geneva Seal-certified timepiece, (we say “timepiece” because this quality hallmark concerns the entire watch head, and not just the movement) as are most all Roger Dubuis watches produced today. Ready to measure that 500kph average speed is the Roger Dubuis RD780 movement, with a flyback chronograph and a “cryptic date” that is legible in its 6 o’clock window, while the rest of the display can be spotted around the edge of the dial.
As the brand explains, all watches in the Excalibur Spider range are “skeletonized to the extreme,” and it is true that the closer you look the more new levels, tiers, bridges, and spaces you will discover engineered into this 10.7mm thick in-house caliber. A rotating minute counter with Lamborghini-style fonts reveals itself at the 3 o’clock position with a three-pronged star wheel carrying the 0, 1, and 2 that allow the chronograph to measure up to 30-minute long intervals. The column wheel, elaborately mirror-polished, is on display just above the “cryptic date” display. You can tell that the architecture of this movement was conceived to be not just functional, but spectacular, too — the absence of a dial is anything but an afterthought.
Roger Dubuis sounds proud of the fact that the RD780 caliber displays 16 distinct finishes, all done in-house, including those “tailored for the Poinçon de Genève certification. These finishes are meticulously applied to every surface of every single component of every caliber, creating a captivating interplay of matte and polished surfaces. This meticulous process enhances the play of light that has become the hallmark of Geneva Haute Horlogerie.”
While some brands even in the high-five, low-six-figure priced segment use an “industrial look” as a means of saving time and cost on movement finishing, it is refreshing and quite cool to see what an industrial-style movement actually looks like when drizzled with traditional decorations. Of course, it would not be a real Roger Dubuis (let alone Lamborghini!) without a bit of showboating — the technical specifications spelled out in all-caps on the two mainspring barrels are here to deliver on those expectations.
The caseback is not exactly a simple one, either. In fact, there is a whole lot going on, from the openworked lugs and the tiny spring revealed inside the easy strap-change system, through the openworked chronograph pushers and polished screw-heads, to the car wheel-inspired self-winding rotor. Hidden deep inside the bowels of the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph Lamborghini Verde Mantis is a 120° vertical clutch, 39 rubies, and a grand total of 310 components, protected by a 10 bar (100m, 330ft equivalent) water resistance rating. The power reserve is 72 hours and the operating frequency is 4Hz.
The case is crafted from C-SCM carbon, complemented by a brushed ceramic bezel and what appear to be titanium pushers and crown. This being a flyback chronograph, you can start the chronograph on the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph Lamborghini Verde Mantis watch and then stop, reset, and restart the running chronograph just by pressing down and releasing the reset pusher. Most regular mechanical chronographs won’t do anything if you try this — a few others will just break.
Those who have considered the savage looks and sound of the Lamborghini SC63 LMDh racing car — with its poisonous frog-like green and red livery, mind-bending performance, and epic engine tone — might understand why it was Roger Dubuis who dared to take on the challenge to create a wristwatch that, within the strict confinements of its genre, could replicate a similar battery of the senses. And at that, it has certainly succeeded, to a point where pairing a traditional watch with the car just feels odd now. It’s a fun mental exercise, give it a go.
The Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph Lamborghini Verde Mantis watch is priced at $107,500 USD with tax. You can learn more at the brand’s website.
