Chess software has been beating grandmasters for decades. What it has never been able to do is reach across a table and move a piece. That distinction – small in description, large in experience – is exactly what SenseRobot Chess Mini is built around.

The context matters. When The Queen’s Gambit landed in 2020 and sent millions of new players scrambling toward online platforms, chess completed its migration to the screen. Fast, frictionless, infinitely accessible – and completely disembodied. The tactile dimension of the game, the weight of a piece in your hand, the physical presence of an opponent across a real board, quietly disappeared. SenseRobot’s argument is straightforward: while digital platforms have transformed how chess is learned and analyzed, staring at a two-dimensional monitor strips away something fundamental that no amount of analytics can replace.

The company first drew attention in 2022 when it began shipping what it claims is the world’s first mass-produced AI robotic chess system – dual robotic arms that physically move pieces on a real board. Since then, it has shipped over 130,000 units across 29 countries, earned an official partnership with the European Chess Union, and collected an Innovation and Partnership Award. The Chess Mini is the next chapter: a compact version aimed at bringing the same technology to a broader and more price-sensitive audience.

The hardware is the central proposition. The robotic arm delivers millimeter-level positioning with a soft yet firm claw grip – strong enough to hold each piece securely, gentle enough to avoid damage – while a camera system reads board positions with over 99.9% recognition accuracy in real time. The whole package compresses into a footprint roughly equivalent to a 13-inch laptop, making it portable enough to carry to a chess club or set up on a coffee table without rearranging your life around it.

The AI underneath scales across 19 difficulty levels built on the Elo rating system. The top tier is not theoretical – it was put to the test in a competitive match in Toulouse in 2024, where the system beat professional competitors. For players at the other end of the spectrum, a built-in LLM functions as a live coaching layer, explaining the logic behind each move as the game unfolds rather than simply flagging mistakes after they’ve been made – a meaningful difference in how useful the feedback actually is for improvement.

The historical game library adds another dimension entirely. Load any of 100 famous games, watch the moves play out physically on the board piece by piece, then take control at any point and continue against the AI from that exact position. It works with the included set, third-party pieces, and custom 3D-printed pieces alike. The system also syncs with major online chess platforms, with no phone or external screen required.

At CES 2026, André Vögtlin, President of Swiss Chess, spoke publicly about the product’s potential to reshape how chess is taught and played at the club level. That kind of institutional endorsement reflects something real: this is not a novelty product for people who want a robot on their shelf. It is a serious attempt to solve the problem of playing chess the way it was meant to be played, without requiring another human to sit across from you.

Early bird Kickstarter pricing is $399, with a planned retail price of $639. Global shipping to early backers is estimated to begin in July 2026. For anyone who has ever felt that grinding through online games on a glowing screen is missing something essential, that price point makes the answer to what it is missing considerably easier to justify.

There are watches that get called “legendary” for marketing purposes, and there are watches that genuinely earned the word. The Longines Legend Diver belongs to the second category – and the new 59 edition, released in 2026, is the closest the line has come to its original idea since the whole thing began.

The story starts in 1959. The original ref. 7042 introduced the Super-Compressor architecture: two screw-down crowns, one for winding, one for operating an internal bidirectional bezel without breaking the case seal. It was an engineering solution in the most literal sense – a bezel housed inside the case, protected from accidental displacement and impact, which mattered enormously on an actual dive. Over the following decades the collection evolved considerably, gaining a date function in 2009, then new materials, color variants, a 36mm case in 2018, and a 39mm version in 2023. But for many collectors, the original 42mm no-date format – the one that defined the Legend Diver in the first place – had been conspicuously absent.

The Legend Diver 59 brings it back without compromise. The 42mm case runs 12.85mm thick with a lug-to-lug of 50.1mm – 2.5mm shorter than its predecessors – which means it wears considerably more compact than the dimensions suggest, closer in feel to a 39mm on the wrist. Both crowns are present and correct: the one at 2 o’clock controls the internal bezel, the lower handles winding and time-setting. The Super-Compressor architecture is intact.

The dial is executed exactly as a proper tribute should be. The grained black no-date surface carries raised Arabic numerals and elongated indexes in old-radium-toned Super-LumiNova, with rhodium-plated sandblasted hands to match. It is closer to the spirit of the original 1959 reference than any previous iteration, and the absence of a date is a deliberate choice aimed squarely at the collector and enthusiast market.

The technical specification is entirely current. The Caliber L888.6 is equipped with a silicon balance spring and anti-magnetic components providing magnetic resistance ten times greater than the ISO 764 standard, alongside a 72-hour power reserve. The watch carries COSC chronometer certification and meets the ISO 6425 standard for professional dive watches, with water resistance rated to 300 meters – a meaningful upgrade from the original’s 120-meter rating.

The new Milanese mesh bracelet is one of the defining updates: it gives the watch a more refined and period-correct appearance while improving comfort on the wrist, with a double-folding safety clasp featuring tool-free micro-adjustment. A black rubber tropic-style strap is included as well.

Pricing is set at $4,100 before tax. In a market where vintage-inspired divers have become one of the most competitive segments in watchmaking, the Legend Diver 59 occupies a clear and well-justified position – a watch with genuine history behind it, engineering logic that has not aged in 65 years, and technical execution that requires no apology at this price point. That is what a proper tribute looks like. And don’t forget to check our list of the most expensive watches.

On Christmas Eve 1968, astronaut Bill Anders looked out of Apollo 8’s window and saw something no human had ever seen before: Earth, whole and luminous, rising above the lunar horizon. He grabbed a camera and took what became arguably the most reproduced environmental photograph in history. That single image reframed humanity’s relationship with our planet – a pale blue marble suspended in the absolute black of space.

Fifty-eight years later, the Artemis II crew did something almost identical, pointing their cameras backward as Orion swung behind the Moon and capturing Earth in the act of setting below the lunar limb. That photograph, taken April 6, 2026, existed for barely nine days before LEGO builder BuildingDreams submitted an Ideas project to immortalize it in brick form.

The Earthset mosaic is a 48 by 32 centimeter wall-art panel that translates the soft curves of Earth’s atmosphere, the brown and blue patchwork of continents and ocean, and the pale grey sweep of lunar regolith into a grid of plastic studs with a faithfulness that genuinely stops you mid-scroll.

The build sits in the tradition of LEGO’s own Art series – that line of large-format mosaic panels designed to function as legitimate wall decor rather than shelf clutter. The panel frame is clean and silver-edged, the depth a slim 2.8 centimeters, and the overall composition respects the original photograph’s balance: vast black space occupying the upper field, the Earth arc sweeping across the middle, and the lunar surface anchoring the bottom in tan and brown. What makes it work as a mosaic is the restraint. The builder resists the temptation to over-detail the Earth itself, letting the contrast between white cloud cover, deep ocean blue, and brown landmass do the compositional heavy lifting.

The detail that elevates this above a flat mosaic exercise is the Orion spacecraft, rendered in three dimensions and mounted to the left edge of the panel, solar panels spread wide, jutting out into the room. It breaks the picture plane in exactly the right way – a reminder that this photograph had a photographer, that four humans were inside that capsule watching Earth disappear below the Moon. Beneath the spacecraft, four minifigures stand on a small stepped platform labeled ARTEMIS II, representing Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. The orange Orion Crew Survival System suits are printed with NASA and CSA mission patches, precise enough that you can identify Hansen by the Canadian Space Agency insignia on his chest.

BuildingDreams has noted that Earthset is designed as a companion to their previous Earthrise project – the two panels intended to hang side by side as a kind of 58-year conversation between Apollo 8 and Artemis II. That framing transforms what could have been a simple commemorative build into something genuinely poetic: two photographs of the same planet from the same distance, taken by different generations of humanity, united in plastic brick on a single wall. For anyone with the wall space, the pair would be remarkable – the kind of display that makes a room rather than merely occupying it.

To understand how ambitious the Earthset proposal really is, consider what LEGO has been producing at the high end of its catalog. The biggest LEGO set currently available by piece count is the LEGO Art World Map at 11,695 pieces – a wall-art mosaic, incidentally, not unlike what BuildingDreams is proposing. The recent Death Star, launched in October 2025 at $999.99, became both the most expensive LEGO set ever released and the biggest LEGO set in the Star Wars line, a cross-section build with six complete floors and 38 minifigures. And arriving June 1, 2026: the Lord of the Rings Minas Tirith at 8,278 pieces, the largest LOTR set ever produced. The pattern is unmistakable. LEGO’s adult collector market has an enormous appetite for large, display-worthy, emotionally resonant builds – exactly the category Earthset occupies. The Art series in particular demonstrates that wall-hanging mosaics at scale have a proven retail audience. BuildingDreams is not pitching a niche curiosity; they’re pitching something that fits squarely into LEGO’s most commercially successful adult format.

LEGO Ideas is the community platform where fan-designed builds gather votes toward a 10,000-supporter threshold, at which point LEGO’s internal team formally reviews the submission for potential production as a retail set. Earthset is currently sitting at just over 530 supporters with nearly 586 days left on the clock. The math is not daunting: 10,000 supporters across 586 days is roughly 17 new supporters per day. Given that the project captures both the LEGO community and the space photography community, that is entirely achievable – if people know it exists. If you want to see this one make it to store shelves, head to the LEGO Ideas page and cast your vote.

Chelsea Truck Company has spent the better part of thirteen years doing one thing exceptionally well: taking production off-roaders – Land Rover Defenders, Mercedes G-Wagons, Ineos Grenadiers – and transforming them into bespoke, heavily customized machines that occupy a lane entirely their own. It is a focused, well-established identity. Which is what makes the Wulf 3000 such an unexpected development, and why it is worth paying attention to.

The Wulf 3000 is described by Chelsea Truck Company as a luxury retro-modern electric bike – a fusion of heritage-inspired design and modern electric performance crafted for riders who appreciate engineering, craftsmanship, and individuality in every detail. That language is very deliberate, and so is the product itself. This is not Chelsea Truck Co. slapping its logo on a generic e-bike sourced from a catalogue. The design DNA that defines its four-wheeled work carries over in ways that are immediately legible.

The frame is a retro-inspired aluminium alloy construction built around what the brand calls a golden-triangle architecture – a geometry that provides stability and a composed, planted riding position while reinforcing the bike’s premium character. Everything about the detailing reads as considered rather than cosmetic: a genuine leather saddle, aluminium hardware throughout, RGB accent lighting integrated into the body panels, and a vintage-style windshield that is simply not something you see anywhere else in this segment. The moto-styled e-bike category has grown significantly in recent years, with brands like SUPER73 dominating most of the conversation. The Wulf 3000 arrives from a different lineage entirely, and it shows.

The performance figures are serious. At the heart of the bike sits a 60V 3000W rear hub motor producing 115 Nm of torque, fed by a removable 21700 lithium-ion battery offering up to 100 km of real-world range. Top speed sits between 75 and 80 km/h – roughly 47 to 50 mph – and the bike is claimed to handle a 45-degree climb without drama. Suspension is motorcycle-grade, with an adjustable hydraulic front fork and dual rear air shock absorbers, while braking comes from four-piston hydraulic disc units front and rear. The 20 x 5.0 anti-puncture Innova tires round out a chassis package that is clearly built for something more demanding than a Sunday park ride.

The technology stack is equally comprehensive: an LCD display covering speed, mileage, and lighting status; a built-in Bluetooth speaker system; GPS tracking; NFC entry; smartphone app integration; remote locking; and a multi-layered alarm system with movement detection. For a bike at this price point, that is a genuinely impressive list.

That price point is $3,440, available now through both Chelsea Truck Company and Project Kahn. The off-road-only disclaimer is clearly stated, and local regulations should absolutely be checked before anyone starts planning a street commute – but the Wulf 3000’s combination of legitimate performance hardware, bespoke detailing, and a design sensibility borrowed from a brand that has never built anything generic makes it one of the more compelling things to arrive in the e-bike category in some time. Chelsea Truck Company didn’t just enter a new segment. It entered it looking exactly like itself.

Portugal is not a country that has ever demanded a seat at the supercar table. Its automotive industry has been, largely, an assembly story – manufacturing for others, shipping finished cars bearing other nations’ badges. Adamastor, a Porto-based outfit founded in 2010, spent its first decade doing exactly what that context would suggest: quietly building carbon fiber components for motorsport, staying in its lane, keeping its name off the finished product.

That changed with the Furia. And after a second round of high-speed testing at Portimão last week, it’s no longer a concept or a press release – Portugal’s first supercar is real, and it’s moving.

The Furia is built around a carbon fiber monocoque, and the engine sitting behind the driver is the 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 developed by Ford Performance for the second-generation Ford GT, tuned here to produce over 650 horsepower and 421 lb-ft of torque. It is not the most exotic choice available – there will be no hand-built V12 provenance story here – but it is a thoroughly proven engine, one that has spent years demonstrating what it can do under genuine racing conditions. Adamastor has paired it with a Hewland sequential gearbox pulled directly from the motorsport world, AP Racing brakes with six-piston calipers up front and four-piston units at the rear, and fully adjustable double-wishbone suspension at all four corners. The claimed 0–62 time is 3.5 seconds, with a top speed exceeding 186 mph in road-legal configuration.

The more interesting conversation, though, is about aerodynamics. The Furia’s body is entirely carbon fiber, and its visual cleanliness – no towers of wings, no aggressive dive planes cluttering the flanks – belies what’s happening underneath. Two Venturi channels in the underbody do the heavy lifting on downforce, generating 1,000 kg at 155 mph in road specification and a reported 1,800 kg in track configuration. Against a dry weight of approximately 2,315 pounds, those numbers tell the story of a car engineered around corners rather than straight lines.

Prototype #001 returned to Portimão not for show, but for serious high-speed testing, and initial sessions produced no reliability concerns and positive feedback from test driver Diogo Matos. For a startup without decades of manufacturer infrastructure behind it, that matters considerably more than the performance figures.

The interior reflects the same uncompromising logic. The two-seat carbon tub integrates a roll bar taken directly from race car thinking, and the steering wheel looks like it belongs on an LMP grid. The starter button is mounted on the roof – which Adamastor calls a ritual – and buyers receive meaningful customization options across materials and layout, with each example hand-assembled at the Porto facility by a dedicated team.

Production is capped at 60 units, priced from €1.6 million before tax, with a Le Mans program on the longer-term horizon – the company has outlined plans for both a road-legal homologated version and a track-only configuration under the same platform.

The question that follows any new supercar brand is always the same: will it actually happen? The history of this segment is populated with beautiful renders and compelling press materials that never found their way into buyers’ garages. What separates the Adamastor story, at least for now, is that a prototype is running at speed on a real circuit without falling apart. For a company that has been building carbon fiber for fifteen years and is now applying that expertise to something with its own name on it, that is less a surprise than it might initially appear. The Furia is Portugal’s first real answer to a question the country never previously thought to ask – and on current evidence, it is a credible one. Also be sure to check our list of the fastest cars in the world.

Patek Philippe is not a brand that surprises easily. Its vocabulary – restrained cases, classical complications, meticulous finishing – has been consistent for decades, and departures from it tend to register as events. The Celestial Sunrise and Sunset ref. 6105G, unveiled at Watches & Wonders 2026, is very much one of those events.

The headline complication is significant on its own terms. The Celestial line has depicted the night sky above Geneva since 2002, layering a rotating star chart with lunar phases and orbit display. But until now, Patek Philippe had never produced a wristwatch with sunrise and sunset indications – despite the complications appearing in legendary pocket watches including those made for James Ward Packard in 1927 and Henry Graves Jr. in 1933. The 6105G finally closes that gap, and does so with a solution that goes a step further: for the first time, the sunrise and sunset times can be corrected for daylight saving time with a simple push of a case corrector, eliminating the mental arithmetic that other watches in this category have always required.

The dial carries the full astronomical program. A sapphire disc carrying the star chart rotates once in 23 hours and 56 minutes – sidereal time – with the Milky Way printed on its reverse side to add depth to the display. A second sapphire disc, coated in black PVD and mounted on an aluminium wheel, tracks the moon’s rotation in 24 hours and 50 minutes, with a cutaway revealing a mineral crystal disc beneath that reproduces the lunar phases. This mechanism deviates by just one day every 3,000 years. The date scale at the periphery does double duty, serving not only as a calendar but as the scale against which both sunrise and sunset times are read – a clever piece of functional integration that keeps the dial from becoming illegible.

The movement behind all of this took more than five years to develop. The Caliber 240 C LU CL LCSO adds 121 components to the base micro-rotor movement, arriving at a total of 426 parts within a thickness of just 7.93mm, alongside six pending patents covering the sunrise and sunset rack mechanism, the daylight saving time management system, and several innovations in the crown and winding architecture. That the result remains under 8mm thick is an achievement worth pausing on.

The case is where the 6105G becomes genuinely surprising. At 47mm, it is considerably larger than its predecessor the ref. 6102, and arrives with no traditional lugs – the integrated black composite strap feeds directly into the case middle, giving it the ergonomic profile of a sports watch rather than a grand complication. The flanks of the case carry an X-shaped relief pattern that Thierry Stern drew from the tubular structure of space modules and satellites, a design language that continues onto the strap and caseback. Opinions on whether this aesthetic belongs in Patek Philippe’s portfolio have varied sharply among collectors and critics, which is itself telling – the brand rarely provokes that kind of debate.

Despite the size, the absence of lugs gives the 6105G a smaller effective footprint on the wrist, and most who have worn it report that it sits better than the dimensions suggest, though the weight of the white gold case makes itself known.

The price is CHF 350,000, or approximately $437,000 in the US market. That places it squarely in the territory of what Patek Philippe calls a “pass it on to the next generation” purchase – which may be exactly the right framing for a watch that took over five years to engineer and carries complications last seen, in wearable form, on nothing that existed before. The 6105G is not a watch for every collector. But as a demonstration of what this brand can do when it decides to move, it is difficult to argue with. And don’t forget to check our list of the most expensive watches.

The latest release from Morgan Motor Company shows that tradition and performance don’t have to compete. The new Supersport 400 keeps the brand’s unmistakable pre-war roadster DNA while pushing its engineering to a level that firmly places it in modern sports car territory.

At first glance, it looks like a machine from another era. Long bonnet, flowing fenders, narrow cockpit. Underneath, it tells a different story. The car is built on Morgan’s CXV aluminum platform, reinforced by the marque’s signature ash wood frame. That unusual combination is not nostalgia for the sake of it. It keeps weight low while preserving the tactile, slightly imperfect character that defines the brand.

Power comes from a tuned version of the BMW B58 . Output sits at 402 horsepower, making this the most powerful production Morgan so far. With a weight of roughly 2,579 pounds, the numbers translate into real performance. 0 to 62 mph takes 3.6 seconds. More importantly, it delivers that speed without muting driver involvement. No heavy layers of isolation. No artificial filtering.

Handling has received just as much attention. A standard Dynamic Handling Pack adds adjustable Nitron dampers, revised suspension geometry, and lightweight forged wheels. The setup sharpens response without making the car feel clinical. An optional limited-slip differential improves traction when pushed harder, especially on uneven roads where lightweight cars tend to struggle.

Sound is part of the experience as well. A redesigned exhaust system is available in active or high-flow configurations. It amplifies the inline-six character without turning it into background noise. The focus remains on balance rather than theatrics.

Visually, Morgan avoided over-designing the car. The Supersport 400 stays close to its roots. Subtle updates like front wing vents and cleaner lower bodywork improve airflow and stability. They also give the car a slightly more modern edge without erasing its identity.

Inside, the approach is similar. Traditional craftsmanship dominates. Hand-stitched leather, optional Alcantara, and bespoke detailing define the cabin. Modern elements are present, but restrained. Updated gauges and aluminum accents add clarity and precision without disrupting the analog feel.

Pricing starts around £112,000. That places it firmly in niche territory, but the value proposition is not about specs alone. Production remains low-volume, and each car can be heavily customized. Buyers are not just getting performance. They are getting something closer to a tailored object than a mass-produced vehicle.

Production begins in 2026, with orders already open. The Supersport 400 doesn’t try to compete with mainstream sports cars on their terms. It offers a different idea of performance. Lightweight, mechanical, and intentionally imperfect in the ways that make driving feel real. Be sure to check our list of the most beautiful cars ever.

Few stories in aviation over the past several years have had as dramatic an arc as Volocopter’s. Once celebrated as one of Europe’s most promising flying taxi startups, the German eVTOL pioneer accumulated hundreds of millions in funding, completed high-profile test flights, and pursued commercial launches in cities like Paris and Singapore – before running headlong into the twin walls of slow aerospace certification and mounting cash burn. By 2024, the company had entered insolvency proceedings. In March 2025, it was acquired by Wanfeng Auto Holding Group, the Chinese automotive supplier that also owns Diamond Aircraft, for €10 million. The VoloXPro, unveiled this week at AERO Friedrichshafen, is the first meaningful sign of what comes next.

The aircraft is a two-seat, fully electric ultralight multicopter – a deliberate step back in scale from the more ambitious VoloCity air taxi that defined Volocopter’s earlier chapter, and a deliberate step forward in strategic clarity. Volocopter and Diamond Aircraft worked intensively on the development throughout 2025, modularizing their product portfolio, realigning the supply chain, and optimizing individual components. The result borrows proven architecture from the VoloCity while targeting a far broader and more accessible customer base.

The specification is straightforward by design. The VoloXPro carries two people, runs on 18 rotors, cruises at 70 km/h, has a maximum range of 40 km, and a maximum take-off mass of 600 kg with a payload of 154 kg. That last figure – the 600 kg MTOM – is significant, as it places the aircraft within the ultralight classification in Germany, which simplifies and accelerates the path to regulatory approval. Volocopter expects to achieve ultralight certification in Germany by the end of 2026, alongside parallel approval processes in other European countries.

The shared components with the VoloCity are not an accident of budget or timeline. They are the strategy. The shared use of technical components between the VoloCity and VoloXPro, combined with ultralight certification, is designed to significantly reduce costs – and, crucially, to carry forward the safety validation work already done on the earlier platform. Volocopter describes the safety standard as comparable to commercial aviation, which it calls a first in Germany’s ultralight aircraft category.

The modular platform concept is the other key to the VoloXPro’s commercial ambition. The aircraft can be configured across a wide range of variants – from single-stick control and minimalist cockpit options to high-end versions for professional operators, with optional features including a single-screen glass cockpit, collision warning systems, customizable exterior paintwork, fast charging, and various battery options. In Europe, the primary targets are flight schools, flying clubs, and sightseeing operators. Internationally, the aircraft is positioned for professional air taxi use.

Volocopter also anticipates a range increase of around 25 percent by 2027 through a new battery cell, with the modular design allowing for easy battery swapping. That upgrade path matters given that the current 40 km range is one of the more obvious constraints on the aircraft’s utility in an air taxi context.

Marie Masson, Volocopter’s senior business development manager, framed the aircraft as the product of combining Diamond’s supply chain experience and type certification expertise with Volocopter’s pioneering knowledge of electric aircraft – and asking how to enter the market faster using both. The VoloXPro, in that sense, is less a grand reinvention and more a disciplined answer to the question that sank the first chapter: how do you build an eVTOL business that actually reaches customers?

The answer, it seems, is to start smaller, smarter, and with a clearer line of sight to certification. Whether that approach proves sufficient will become clearer before the year is out.

Watches and Wonders 2026 was, by most accounts, a careful show. The big names refined rather than reinvented, anniversaries were marked with modest updates, and the independent watchmakers largely stayed within their established territories. Then Hautlence flipped open the Retrovision ’64 and reminded everyone what a genuinely original idea looks like.

The premise is exactly as audacious as it sounds. The watch is modeled after the communicator Captain Kirk used to hail the Enterprise – flip-top grille, crown at noon with a green ring accent, and a shape that reads unmistakably as a prop from a 1960s science-fiction set. The difference, of course, is what lives inside.

The Retrovision ’64 is the third entry in Hautlence’s ongoing Concepts series, which takes pop-culture artifacts from specific decades and rebuilds them as functioning mechanical timepieces. The ’47 drew from transistor radios in 2024; the ’85 channeled the visual language of Japanese robotics in 2025. With the ’64, the reference point is the space-obsessed optimism of 1960s television, and the execution is remarkably faithful. The case measures 61.2 x 41.8 x 15.6mm in Grade 5 titanium, sandblasted and finished in brown PVD with red gold PVD trim on the hinged flip cover. That cover is perforated in a grid of tiny holes mimicking a speaker grille – a detail so specific it could only have been deliberate.

Open it and the watch splits into two completely separate displays under two separate sapphire crystals. The upper, round crystal covers a minutes dial finished in orange, green, and white lacquer with Globolight numerals tracked by a skeletonized orange hand. Below it, a rectangular crystal covers a linear hour track built directly into the case, with orange-lacquered numerals and an arrow indicator that travels the length of the track before snapping back to the beginning. That mechanism – a retrograde jump executed on a linear rather than arc-shaped track – is the kind of engineering challenge that gets quietly discussed in workshops for years before it looks this effortless on a wrist.

The center of the minutes dial is cut away entirely, exposing a one-minute flying tourbillon with a double hairspring spinning in full view. In almost any other watch at this price, the tourbillon would be the headline. Here it shares billing with a communicator gag, which either says something about the audacity of the concept or the sheer density of complications packed into a single piece.

The D50 self-winding movement was developed in collaboration with Agenhor, the Geneva-based specialists Hautlence has worked with since introducing this linear jumping-hour mechanism on its Linear line back in 2022. At 239 components, 39 jewels, 21,600 vibrations per hour, and a minimum 72-hour power reserve, the technical credentials are entirely serious regardless of what the case looks like from across a room.

Priced at CHF 129,700 before tax – roughly $165,000 – and limited to just three examples worldwide, the Retrovision ’64 occupies a category of object that is less product and more statement. Hautlence is a small brand making a deliberate argument that watchmaking can still be playful, technically ambitious, and genuinely strange all at once. On the evidence of this piece, the argument holds. Also be sute to checkour article about watch investments.

The connection between Rolls-Royce and the nautical world runs deeper than most automotive stories dare to go. Long before he met Henry Royce, Charles Rolls’ family owned the Santa Maria – a substantial schooner-rigged steam yacht that cruised throughout Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s. More than a century later, that maritime heritage has found its most complete four-wheeled expression yet in the Cullinan Yachting: a collection of four Private Commissions that blur the line between road and sea with extraordinary confidence.

The first thing you notice is that each car has a story rooted in place. North arrives in Crystal over Light Blue, evoking the colder waters of higher latitudes. South wears a deep Crystal over Arabian Blue IV, capturing warmer climes. East is rendered in Dark Silk Teal, suggesting the calm and mystery of deep water, while West appears in Sapphire Gunmetal – the color of a storm-lit ocean sky. All four share a hand-painted compass motif on the front wings, a Twin Coachline in Phoenix Red and Arctic White, and 22-inch fully polished alloy wheels that subtly recall the mirror-bright brightwork of contemporary racing yachts.

Beyond the paint, the Cullinan Yachting is fundamentally a showcase of what human hands can accomplish when given enough time and creative freedom. The hand-painted fascia – depicting the trailing wake of a tender heading toward a yacht at anchor – required two months of experimentation alone, refining paint combinations, application techniques, and lacquering processes. Crucially, the direction of the wake on each car reflects its own compass orientation, ensuring every commission is a true one-of-one. The craftsmanship extends to the rear of the cabin, where an intricate marquetry compass motif on the Waterfall console is assembled from more than 40 individual pieces of veneer in Sycamore, Teak, Ash, and Black Bolivar.

Step inside and the yacht references are everywhere – but never heavy-handed. Open-pore teak runs throughout the cabin, a material far more commonly found on yacht decks than in automobiles, lending warmth and genuine maritime authenticity. The seating tells its own story: Arctic White and Navy Blue leather wraps the interior, with contrast stitching, piping, and headrest monograms in Navy, while seat inserts carry a Bespoke rigging pattern hand-stitched by an artisan with a personal connection to the Royal Navy – each stitch echoing the structure of twisted nautical rope. Above it all, the ceiling becomes a navigational experience, with a unique Starlight Headliner of hand-placed fiber-optic stars arranged in patterns drawn from Mediterranean wind maps, subtly brightening and dimming to suggest shifting air currents overhead.

For all the poetry of its construction, the Cullinan Yachting remains a serious machine. Each of the four commissions is powered by the 6.75-liter twin-turbocharged V12, producing 553 horsepower and 664 lb-ft of torque – performance credentials entirely sufficient for a vehicle of this stature.

What makes the Cullinan Yachting more than a styling exercise is the internal consistency of its vision. Every detail – the rope-stitched seats, the teak panels, the painted wake on the fascia, the wind-map headliner, the compass on the Waterfall – connects back to a single idea. These four cars are not trying to be yachts. They are trying to carry the spirit of the sea – its navigational romance, its craftsmanship traditions, its sense of boundless direction – onto roads that their owners know just as well as open water. In that, they succeed completely. Also be sure to check our list of the most expensive cars in the world.