richard mille made a clock feels like it’s on a tour de france bike. The problem is that it probably shouldn’t even go anywhere near an actual Tour de France stage.
The new RM 64-01 Tourbillon Colnago is Richard Mille’s latest collaboration, created with renowned Italian bicycle manufacturer Colnago and led by four-time Tour champion Tadej Pogason.
On paper, it’s a cycling watch. In practice, it’s an 800,000 Swiss francs (~$1.44 million AUD) collector’s item, limited to 50 pieces worldwide and almost certainly a far cry from Peloton.
Colnago has confirmed that Pogasar will not wear it while racing, citing personal safety concerns involved in strapping something this valuable to your wrist in an accident-prone bunch.
Fair enough. Even by Richard Mille’s standards, this is a very expensive thing.
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A racing bike turned into a watch
The RM 64-01 is not a bicycle watch in the sense of being useful for cycling. It is a cycling watch in the sense that every design decision inside it refers to a bike.
The manually wound process consists of 274 components and utilizes a skeletonized Grade 5 titanium architecture built around lightness and transparency.
The barrel sits at 1 o’clock, the variable-inertia tourbillon sits at 7 o’clock, and the entire layout is arranged to echo a bicycle drivetrain. The upper titanium bridges feature star-shaped geometry borrowed from the Gilco tubes used on Colnago’s famous Master frames of the 1980s, a design originally developed to increase frame stiffness without increasing weight.
This is the type of detail most people would never notice. Richard Mille buyers will do just that.
The case is made from White Quartz TPT with Azure Blue Quartz TPT accents developed specifically for this model. The color palette references Colnago’s C68, 5N red gold appearing on the flange, crown cap and hands, with the hands shaped to resemble bicycle crank arms, and Colnago’s Ace-of-Clubs emblem on the crown.
That’s a lot of references packed into a very small space, and none of them are accidental.
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Built for collectors, not for climbing
What makes the RM 64-01 really interesting is the difference between how it looks and what it actually is.
Richard Mille has built a long reputation around the idea of watches built for athletes performing under real pressure, worn on the wrist and designed to stay on the wrist as the sport demands.
It keeps all that language but sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s too rare, too expensive and apparently too responsible to wear in competition.
This places it in a different area from Richard Mille’s earlier cycling works, including the RM 70-01 Alain Prost, which had a mechanical odometer and was directly linked to the riding function.
The RM64-01 is not trying to help Pogacar win a stage. It’s trying to translate the feeling of a Colnago bicycle into something mechanical, architectural and extremely expensive for collectors who want to own a piece of that world without leaving the land.
Whether a watch that cannot be worn for its intended purpose is a pure collector’s item or a very elaborate paradox probably depends on how you feel about spending over a million dollars on something just to keep in a safe.
Richard Mille buyers rarely lose sleep over that question.
