Like its transparent sapphire sibling, this RM 66 raises a defiant gold hand in the middle of the dial, the sign of the horns, the universal gesture of rock and roll thrown back at the stage. But where the sapphire version floated that gesture inside a block of clear crystal, this is the Carbon TPT edition, and here the case itself is as much the marvel as the sculpture it frames. Look closely at the dark case and you see it is not plain black but marbled, striped with fine wavy bands like the grain of petrified wood or the pattern of a damascus blade, and that striking surface is the signature of one of the most advanced materials in watchmaking.
Carbon TPT, which stands for Thin Ply Technology, is built up from hundreds of wafer-thin layers of parallel carbon fibres. Each layer is only microns thick, and as the layers are stacked they are rotated against one another, then soaked in resin and fused together under heat and pressure into a single solid block. When Richard Mille machines the curved tonneau case out of that block, the cutting slices down through the stacked strata at shifting angles, exposing the edges of all those rotated layers, and it is this that creates the mesmerising wavy, wood-grain striping across the surface. Because the pattern depends on exactly how the cut meets the layers, no two cases ever come out quite the same, so every Carbon TPT watch wears a surface pattern unique to itself.
The material is chosen for far more than its looks. Carbon TPT is extraordinarily light, lighter than metal, so the watch sits on the wrist with almost no weight at all, the near-weightless feel that is Richard Mille's obsession and signature. It is also immensely strong and stable, resistant to scratches and to the knocks of real wear, so that despite its delicate open mechanism the watch is genuinely built to be worn hard. Light, tough, and patterned like nothing else, the case is a high-technology object that also happens to be beautiful.
Inside that case is the theatre that gives the RM 66 its name and its grin. Rising from the heart of the movement is a fully three-dimensional hand, sculpted in gold and finished by hand, its index and little finger raised in the rock-and-roll salute, complete down to a tiny skull ring, a piece of real jewellery sculpture integrated into the architecture of a working watch. And it is wrapped around genuine mechanical seriousness, because at the top turns a flying tourbillon, the escapement mounted in a continuously rotating cage that averages away the effects of gravity, and of the flying kind, supported only from below so that it appears to float, spinning free and unobstructed among the gold fingers and the skeletonised bridges. The movement is opened right up so the whole irreverent spectacle is on view, the sculpture and the machine sharing one small, dramatic stage.
Everything is built in the unmistakable Richard Mille idiom: the curved tonneau case following the wrist, assembled in three parts and held together by the ring of spline screws around the bezel, the movement skeletonised until almost nothing but structure remains, the whole watch engineered to be worn and even worn hard. It is finished on a black rubber strap and made in the tiniest of numbers, a limited edition of just fifty pieces, each with its own unique carbon pattern, which makes every one a genuine rarity.
What ties it together is the philosophy behind it. Richard Mille built its name on bringing the materials and attitude of motor racing and aerospace into watchmaking, on refusing the stuffiness of tradition while exceeding its technical standards, and the RM 66 is that spirit at its most playful and daring, a flying tourbillon sharing a dial with a rock-and-roll hand gesture, deadly serious in its engineering and gleefully rebellious in its character at once.
That is what makes this Carbon TPT RM 66 so special. It fuses a genuine grand complication, a floating flying tourbillon, with a three-dimensional gold sculpture of the universal gesture of rock and roll, and it cases the whole thing in Carbon TPT, a layered high-tech composite that is feather-light, immensely tough, and striped with a wavy, wood-grain pattern unique to each watch. Serious and playful, rebellious and refined, light as nothing on the wrist and limited to just fifty pieces, it is watchmaking with its fist raised, and it wears that attitude with total confidence.
