Porsche Design launches all-titanium Chronograph 1 at new Swiss manufactory

Porsche Design gave its signature chronograph a proper new home in Grenchen, and that matters as much as the watch itself. The brand opened its Timepieces Manufactory there on March 19, 2026, in the former Eterna headquarters, after acquiring the building in spring 2024 and modernizing it over about 18 months. This is Porsche Design’s first permanent operational base in one of Switzerland’s most traditional watchmaking regions, and the move reads like more than a factory opening: it is a commitment to making watches that feel closer to the brand’s design language, not just its licensing business.

The watch to know is the Chronograph 1 - All Titanium Numbered Edition, a limited run capped at 1,000 units worldwide per year and priced at $8,250 in the U.S. and €7,950 in Europe. For the buyer who lives at the intersection of watches, cars, and industrial design, this is the one to look at. The 40.8 mm case and bracelet are glass bead-blasted titanium, which is exactly the right choice here because it keeps the Chronograph 1 silhouette intact while making the watch lighter, cooler, and easier to wear every day than a heavier steel sports watch. It is water-resistant to 10 bar, which makes it far more practical than a fragile collector piece, and the matt black dial with white numerals, Super-LumiNova, and tachymeter scale preserves the original’s dashboard-inspired clarity.

The lineage is the selling point. Ferdinand Alexander Porsche’s first Chronograph 1 arrived in 1972 with the all-black look inspired by the Porsche 911 dashboard. In 1975, he refined the idea into the black-dial, uncoated stainless-steel version, and Porsche Design later introduced one of its first all-titanium wristwatches in 1980. That history gives this edition real continuity instead of costume nostalgia. Inside, the in-house WERK 01.140 movement is COSC-certified, runs at 28,800 vibrations per hour, offers a 48-hour power reserve, and uses 25 jewels. The sevenfold anti-reflective sapphire crystal, with hard coating derived from Porsche cockpit displays, is the kind of detail that sounds nerdy until sunlight hits your wrist in a car.

Grenchen also gives the brand a richer story to tell the person receiving this as a gift. About 10 watchmakers work there now, assembling calibers, cases, and dials, while the site also includes a museum, an event space, and a customer design studio for bespoke watches. Porsche says customers can even visit to personalize a watch to match a Porsche vehicle, which pushes the factory-delivery mindset into horology. Orlando Bloom called the watch “the perfect symbiosis of past and future,” and for once the line fits: this is the more interesting gift than a conventional prestige sports watch because it offers heritage, materials, and a live manufacturing story in one package.