I have to admit something: A current guilty pleasure of mine is early Hublot MDM Geneve watches. When Carlo Crocco’s new brand burst onto the Swiss watchmaking scene in 1980, it did something a little crazy, combining gold cases with integrated rubber straps and quartz movements. All this is in a slim, elegant, 36mm watch that resembled a hublot (porthole in French). That original ethos is carried forward, kind of, in the modern Classic Fusion lineup.
Hublot’s MP (Masterpiece) collection is the polar opposite of this, and today Hublot has introduced the MP-10 Tourbillon Weight Energy System Titanium. It’s a mouthful of a name for a mouthful of a watch.
I have to admit something else: I don’t really like the new MP-10 Tourbillon Weight Energy System Titanium; or at least, I don’t really get it; chances are you don’t either. But I love that Hublot doesn’t really give a shit about either of our opinions. I love that what those MDM Geneve watches were to 1980 this new MP-10 might be to 2024. While so many other brands are so concerned with criticism that they’re paralyzed with indecision and releasing watches that look mostly the same to please some theoretical focus group, Hublot isn’t.
“Hublot kind of makes you think: ‘If you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly,’” Sarah Miller wrote when exploring the weird world of Hublot last year. And the MP-10 Tourbillon Weight Energy System is a damn grizzly bear.
The story of this particular grizzly starts with the new caliber: 592 components, 2 linear weights, an inclined tourbillon, and a circular power reserve indicator. The MP-10 doesn’t have a dial; all of the indications are read straight off the caliber itself. There are four constantly rotating rollers that display the hours, minutes, seconds, and power reserve (look ma, no hands!).
The winding system is also new. On either side of the central architecture with those rollers sit two oscillating, white gold weights that wind the movement bi-directionally. All this in a big ole shiny, microblasted titanium case that measures 54 x 41 x 22mm, or basically the equivalent of taking four JLC Reverso Small Seconds and stacking them together like legos on your wrist.
You’ve gotta give it to Hublot. They always find a way to out-Hublot themselves, and they’ve done it again. A watch with no dial? Where do you tell the time directly via some rollers in the middle of the caliber? I mean who else is even thinking about how to do that? I don’t see that coming up in most other Swiss watch brand boardrooms, or at least it’s not brought up by people who care about remaining gainfully employed.
Hublot might be the one Swiss watch brand that truly doesn’t care. That asks “why not?” instead of “why?” So yeah, the MP-10 Tourbillon Weight Energy System Titanium is kind of ugly. I’ll stick with my cute little MDM Geneve Hublots from the ’80s, but remember, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, that those gold-and-rubber watches were about as avant-garde 40 years ago as the MP-10 is today.