Ducati and Gerald Chalres are developing a watch to celebrate the 916

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Ducati 916 superbike, Gerald Charles has just announced the Maestro 4.0 Ducati 30^° Anniversary 916 clock.

There is no motorcycle fan who does not know the Ducati 916, and there is no watch lover who has not heard the name Gérald Genta, the designer of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, the Patek Philippe Nautilus and many other iconic watches of the 20th century. It may not be immediately obvious why the legacies of Ducati and Genta are being linked for the 30th anniversary of the legendary 916, but it is both the genre-defining design and the advanced mechanical technology that unites them.

Gerald Charles was the last brand founded by the watch industry's most famous designer. Swiss-Italian Genta founded the brand in 2000 by combining his first and middle names after selling his other eponymous company, Gérald Genta, to Bulgari. Genta then sold Gerald Charles to the Ziviani family in 2003, but remained their chief designer until his death in 2011.

Ducati has also changed hands over the years, most recently becoming part of the Volkswagen Group through a long-standing close relationship with Lamborghini. Long known for its high-quality design, the 1994 Ducati 916 remains the Italian brand's most iconic motorcycle, lauded for its sleek lines and upswept exhaust as well as its on-road performance.

The sophisticated technology in the Ducati's desmodromic V-twin engine and the complex movements in the Gerald Charles watches have pushed precision mechanics to their limits. The jumping hour indicator, where the digital hour digit jumps directly to the next on the hour, is perhaps most famously associated with Gérald Genta and was found on many of the watches he designed during his lifetime. It's no surprise, then, that this fun display also appears in the Gerald Charles Maestro 4.0 Ducati 30.^° Anniversary 916.

Aside from its shiny retro-futuristic look thanks to striking super-lightweight materials like the matte black ceramic bezel, forged carbon fiber case and titanium crown, this watch storms at the eye with slanted bright red numerals on a central motorcycle wheel that recalls the design of the original three-spoke bronze alloy rim of the Ducati 916. Through the “rim,” which is actually the gold-colored disc that moves the jumping hours, we can see Gerald Charles' new automatic caliber with proprietary jumping hour function. A red Super-LumiNova window around the current hour makes it even more legible at nightfall while adding an extra layer of cool. All 12 numerals are filled with the same bright red substance.

The Gerald Charles Maestro 4.0 Ducati 30^° Anniversario 916 is available in a limited edition of 250 pieces for $42,400. If you purchased the Ducati Panigale V4 SP2 30° Anniversario 916 motorcycle, you can have your motorcycle's serial number engraved on the case back. Each of the 250 watches also comes with a special lithograph of Octavio Garcia's sketched design.