Should all Ingenieurs be amagnetic?

Roberto nailed. :)
I admit that I am a purist regarding the Ingenieur, Aquatimer and Pilot lines. Recently, however, Andrew was kind and allowed me to have his VC Ingenieur Tribute to Italy for a couple of hour on my wrist. I must admit I was smitten by the design. Esthetically speaking the watch is perfect but, alas, it is not amagnetic. Since then I have been trying hard to find a rationalization I can live with, to search and acquire one.
No luck there. I think I will remain a purist and stick to amagnetic Ingenieurs.
Thanks to all who contributed.

Roberto knows you very well! +1 @Roberto :)

YES, I'll go with you and stick to amagnetic Ingenieurs.

Best regards

Of course it's marketing and we all fell for it more or less. At least, I did. But, what does Ingenieur mean? IWC answered that question some time ago ;)

Spot on Bas. The truth is that was a damned good watch, whatever its name.

How contemporary its look, how ahead of its times, the features he offered.

That's why I always think the watch itself, not the brand nor the name of the model nor anything else might take my attention away from the intrinsical qualities of the watch.

Easy decision for me.

I have only Ings. with magnetic shielding in my collection.

But I would never buy another Ing. without magnetic shielding !
The huge size is another reason for me, to buy no new Ings. anymore.

But from my sight of view, It is no disadvantage that nearly all new Ings. don´t have magnetic shieldings, because it helps me to save my money for other brands :-)

Regards

HEBE

I think we are stressing maybe the wrong point with the antimagnetic feature looked at only. The question that IWC should have asked itself is: Which are the aspects that make our Ingenieur watches different from other brand's watches and how can the DNA of the watch and its history be used to make this distinction? History is something no other brand can copy. Design can be copied, and some nasty tongues see the new Ingenieur designs partially copied from other brands located in Nyon or Le Brassus.

From that perspective, it looks to some people that IWC went for adapting a more fashion-oriented, short-living design than for a way to translate heritage into a modern time and making it beyond comparison to any other competitor. As most of the potential buyers will be in the Asian market, and most of them won't know or even care about the history of the watches, that strategy might pay off in the short term. But it puts off the really small minority who knows and cares about the DNA of the lines.

The risk however is that - on the expense of this short-term view - the brand in total will suffer from credibility, as it becomes arbitrary. It is so easy to copy... I am a strong believer of true values, and therefore I will never buy a diving watch that would not allow me to go diving - even if I will never do so.

Or if you like another comparison: Most the people buying fast cars will never drive as fast as the car could and use all the horsepower. Others with an Offroader will never use their car off-road. But they would not have bought their cars if they knew they wouldn't ever be able to do that.

While I believe that you make some good points, I must object to the use of any ethnic or geographic stereotypes or generalizations here. Some generalizations can't be founded on empirical evidence and there is a certain moral objection to such. Please don't here.

Michael

To me, it has nothing to do with stereotypes: It is a question of the maturity of a market. The brand awareness for IWC in Asia is different and "younger" than for example in Europe. That's all I meant. But maybe that's my SwEnglish not being sufficient to express what I mean.

Short term gain versus long term gain. I hear that argument often in these kind of discussions. To me it is clearer that the short term gain can be achieved than that the long term gain will be lost. Chances are that the argument is made more for the arguments sake than that it is necessarily true. The latter cannot be proven right now anyway.

There are two forces that work against each other. One is flexibility and adaptation, successful concepts for survival. The other is consequence, perseverence, tradition, adherence to some concepts of the past. It often stands for high moral values, fighting spirit, trust. I guess both ways of thinking are necessary to be successful.

The question here is, is the antimagnetic property vital for the Ingenieur line, or can it be sacrificed for other properties? The example of the divers watch may lead the way here. With a watch that starts leaking water at 40 meters you cannot dive. With a watch with no antimagnetic cage you cannot, well, cannot do what? And if the watch maybe once in five years gets disturbed by magnetic fields it is easily fixed in an inexpensive way. By repositioning the Ingenieur as a ruggedised sporty watch with an interesting name it might really be successful in the long run. I at least think it is too simple to declare that in this example in the long run gain will get into decline by not consequently putting an antimagnetic cage in every Ingenieur.

Kind regards,
Paul

By the way, do you expect a run on the now discontinued Mission Earth? I heard nobody lament its disappearance, its all too silent disapperarance. And it really was a true basic Ingenieur with all the nice properties like extra ruggedised in-house Pellaton 80110 movement, and of course the antimagnetic cage. Maybe this watch should be key in obtaining.

Kind regards,
Paul

To my thinking, the real coup that IWC could pull off would be to have an amagnetic Ingenieur AND a display back. It is possible with amagnetic materials for the escapement.

The problem, like most business issues, is cost vs. benefit. To develop such a movement would cost more, which would make sense only if it would sell more or if the current approach (display backs with non-amagnetic movements) don't sell. Unfortunately, the display back models often sell better and there's no proof that the costs here would justify the return.

@David,
I am not buying the analogies you present. They work both ways. For example, there are certain cars I would not buy no matter how fast they are because I don't like the way they look. Same with an off road vehicle.

Same for watches. If I like the way it looks I'll overlook the antimagnetic shortcomings. And if its ugly ( to my eyes) it could withstand the pull of the North Pole but I won't own it.

Michael, but that would indeed be an excellent idea to go for. Especially, as the current antimagnetic watches of IWC aren't really fully antimagnetic, because of the dial that is not soft iron anymore.

agreed.

Well, Alan - for some people only the look or design matters. For some others, the real values and features matter, too. I am not a person who can afford to buy a new luxury watch any time I'd like or if I get bored looking at the ones I already have, so the consideration of all aspects matters. The watch has to mean something to me, not only look nice. And for most car buyers, I guess the values matter, too.

+1

When they announce the year 2013 to be the year of the Ingeniuer I was actually hoping to see some engineering feat in creating more innovations of the movement of the calibers (for the ones within reach for most of us, at least).

I can’t help but to think about other watch making companies like Brequet that has more patents in recent years that demonstrate their exploration in using silicon, for example (and yes, they do have clear back) and in the same time has some amagnetic properties.

However IWC has taken another path by celebrating the world of motorsports in their watch design and using alternative materials in their casing and design. I see more value in appraising the more popular events in our times through their product rather than trying too hard to keep to the original amagnetic specification.

And boy do they look good!

Watches are few things in life that I appreciate the thingness of things...

Anyhow, as I can be considered and belong to a ‘younger’ market and most probably don’t give two hoots about the history of a particular range of a watch, it's justifiable that I’m totally mesmerized by the latest range of Inge. Then again, what do I know anyway...

It's one of flagship feature of Inge series, so short reply:
YES!

Great reply Vahalis! Just perfect!

Two quick comments:

Roberto and Shing --I do consider brand when looking at a watch. I think some brands represent quality; I'm not just buying a name.

Regulateur --I didn't know that today's IWC's amagnetic only have half of a Faraday cage, with no soft iron dial. Without further data, to my knowledge that's not true. The new Ingemieur Automatic is resistant to 40,000 A/m, and to my knowledge that's simply impossible is the watch is not protected at all on the front half.

Michael, this is the information I got from customer service at IWC one year ago. Some compliacated design features of dials like the sunbeam effect can't be produced (or are very expensive to produce) on dials made out of soft iron, I was told. But maybe that applies only to the pilot's watches and not to the Ingenieur, as I specifically asked why in St.Exupéry Big Pilot or the Spitfire watches the soft iron cage is missing.

Well you certainly twisted that around. LOL
I never said I "only" look at the design. To the contrary, I look at all the "real values and features". But the watch still has to look good.
I don't know why you assume that I buy a new luxury watch any time I like or get bored with watches I have. This is nonsense.

Alan, I did not write specifically about you LOL.

It's obvious your information couldn't then apply to the new Ingenieur automatics, which neither have sunburst dials nor existed a year ago. The watches with sunburst dials, like last year's pilot's chrono. were never presented as being amagnetic nor with Faraday cages. It's true --those dials aren't soft iron-- but there are no half Faraday cages.

Then you are right, Michael. I thought that the general reason why some pilots watches do not have a faraday cage anymore (the dial not being soft iron) applies to all models in general. So there it seems that I was mistaken. Thank you for the correction.