IWC Schaffhausen’s latest Mercedes-Benz watch could have been a simple logo exercise. Instead, the Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar ProSet 140 Years Mercedes-Benz, reference IW329603, puts the anniversary story around one of IWC’s more practical recent complications: the crown-adjustable Perpetual Calendar ProSet.
The watch was announced through IWC’s pressroom on 13 August 2026 and is limited to 140 pieces, matching Mercedes-Benz’s “140 Years of Innovation” theme. The collector point is not just the number. It is that IWC has chosen a genuinely technical platform for the commemoration rather than treating the partnership as a colour-and-badge capsule.
What IWC Changed
The edition uses a 42 mm stainless-steel case with brushed and polished surfaces, a black dial, solid-gold appliqués and gold-plated hands. A white minute track frames the dial, while the four-digit year display sits between 7 and 8 o’clock, a long-running IWC perpetual-calendar signature. The watch is fitted to a black rubber strap with the brand’s EasX-CHANGE system.
Turn it over and the Mercedes-Benz anniversary becomes more explicit. The sapphire caseback carries the historic DMG/Benz logo, tying the watch to the year 1886 and to the carmaker’s invention narrative. It is a commemorative detail, but it lands better here because the front of the watch stays controlled rather than overloaded with automotive cues.
The ProSet Part Matters
IWC’s Perpetual Calendar ProSet is the real reason this story deserves attention. The system allows the calendar displays to be adjusted forward and backward from a single crown position, without separate correctors or a maze of setting steps. For a complication that can intimidate owners when it has stopped for a while, that is a meaningful usability claim.
The watch uses IWC’s manufacture calibre 82665, with Pellaton automatic winding, ceramic winding components, a nickel-phosphorus escapement, a silicon hairspring and a 60-hour power reserve. IWC also states that the Double Moon display deviates from the actual lunar cycle by only one day after 1,040 years. Those are not decorative claims; they are the technical spine of the release.
Why Collectors Should Care
IWC has a long history of Mercedes-AMG and Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team watches, so another Mercedes-related reference is not surprising on its own. What is more interesting is the choice of complication. A perpetual calendar is usually a high-watchmaking flex; ProSet turns the conversation toward day-to-day ownership and setting confidence.
That makes the edition more coherent than a typical anniversary tie-in. The limitation count, the historic logo and the black-gold dial treatment all do the commemorative work, but the ProSet mechanism gives the watch a reason to exist after the anniversary cycle moves on. For collectors who follow IWC’s modern calendar work, IW329603 is less about Mercedes branding than about where the Big Pilot perpetual calendar is heading: technically complex, but less fussy to live with.
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