Audemars Piguet built its most complicated Royal Oak in stainless steel. The Grande Complication combines a minute repeater, a split-seconds chronograph and a perpetual calendar in one watch, which is the traditional summit of the craft, and houses have almost always reserved that combination for precious metal. This reference does not. The case and the integrated bracelet are steel, which places it in the same material as the entry point to the collection while carrying three of the most demanding complications in watchmaking. That is consistent with what the Royal Oak was for in the first place, since the model exists because Audemars Piguet decided in 1972 that a steel watch could be finished and priced like a gold one, and a steel Grande Complication is the furthest that argument has been taken.
The case is 44 mm across and 15 mm thick in stainless steel, with the octagonal bezel carrying the eight exposed hexagonal screws that have identified the Royal Oak since 1972. This is the largest and tallest case the collection uses, and both dimensions are consequences of what is inside rather than styling decisions: a repeater needs room for its acoustic components, and stacking a chronograph and a calendar under the same dial takes height. Brushed faces meet polished chamfers on every edge, with each change of finish falling exactly on the line, and at 44 mm there is a great deal more surface to hold to that standard than on the 41 mm references. The dial is sapphire, which is to say transparent, so the mechanism is visible through the front of the watch rather than only through the back. Silver-toned counters are set into it to carry the calendar and chronograph indications, and a black inner bezel closes the dial at its edge, giving the eye a boundary that a fully transparent surface would otherwise lack. White gold Royal Oak hands sit above, and together with the counters they are the only opaque elements on the front of the watch. The bracelet is integrated steel, tapering from the case, closing on an AP folding clasp, and at 44 mm the taper has more work to do than anywhere else in the collection.
The function set is a minute repeater, a split-seconds chronograph, a perpetual calendar, hours, minutes and small seconds. A minute repeater chimes the time on demand, striking the hours, quarters and minutes so the watch can be read without being seen. A split-seconds chronograph carries a second timing hand that can be stopped independently and then caught up to the first, which allows two events beginning together to be timed separately. A perpetual calendar tracks the differing lengths of the months and the four-year leap cycle without correction. Each of the three is a serious undertaking alone, and combining them means every indication has to be laid out so it can be found on a dial that is also transparent, with no solid ground to organise it against. The silver-toned counters and the black inner bezel are doing that structural work. A transparent dial is the hardest ground to lay indications on, because there is no field to place them against and every scale has to be legible over whatever happens to sit behind it.
The Royal Oak is the collection Audemars Piguet is built on, and the Grande Complication sits at the top of it. Three references carry the designation: this one in stainless steel, and a pair in white and black ceramic at 44 mm and 15.1 mm with full ceramic bracelets. The two ceramic references adjust the function set, adding a week indication and dropping the small seconds, so this reference is the only one of the three with a running seconds display and the only one without the week. Below the Grande Complication the collection carries its complications separately rather than together, one at a time in cases considerably thinner than this, across perpetual calendars at 9.5 mm and 6.2 mm, flying tourbillons in three constructions, and chronographs at 41 mm and 37 mm.
This reference suits a collector who has decided that the material argument matters more than the material. A steel Grande Complication will be read as a steel watch by anyone who does not know what it is, and its value is entirely in what is behind the sapphire dial rather than in what surrounds it. That is either the most sophisticated position available or an expensive joke depending on the buyer, and both readings are honest. The watch does not settle the question, which is part of why it is interesting. It appeals to someone who already owns precious metal complications and wants one that declines the convention, and to someone who values that the transparent dial makes the mechanism part of the watch rather than something hidden until the caseback is turned over.
