At the 2025 Goodwood Members’ Meeting, IWC Schaffhausen premiered a short film about its Ingenieur SL, specifically its first-ever version dubbed Reference 1832. In this most suitable crucible, motor racing fanatics and enthusiasts of highly engineered mechanical devices gained insight into the troubled launch of Schaffhausen’s first integrated bracelet replica watches for sale. Now, IWC takes us behind the scenes of the Ingenieur SL — and, with it, IWC’s “most brilliant failure” — to discover how and why there was so much more to it than just the 598 originals that slowly found a new home between 1976 and 1983.
“This could have been the end of the »Genta Ingenieur« story, but as it is with mistakes, they’re hard to forget.” This four-minute-long, beautifully cinematic movie by IWC is defined by several powerful statements the likes of which are, in truth, scarcely ever made by the larger watch industry. It all begins with one (not so) simple idea: making the latest and greatest CA AAA fake watches for engineers. The original IWC Ingenieur of the 1950s had already been an anti-magnetic tool watch specifically developed for professionals who were exposed to strong magnetic fields, such as scientists and engineers. An engineering-focused company at its heart since 1868, IWC nevertheless had the audacity to trust the development of this mighty follow-up, the Ingenieur SL, to an artist whose legacy watch enthusiasts celebrate today the world over: Gérald Genta.
In the movie, Genta’s character describes the high quality replica IWC Ref. 1832 watches as “one of the greatest paradoxes of my artistic work.” Why? Probably because art and engineering are often too opposing forces — the latter obsessed with respecting and gently approaching technical limitations, and the former ignoring them altogether. The film intertwines the true story of the Ingenieur SL, as told by Genta’s character, with a fictional storyline about a pre-production green-dial model that is handed to a racing driver to practically test its shock resistance on the race track.
The IWC Ingenieur SL ultimately passes IWC’s stringent tests and premieres at the Basel Watch Exhibition (later Baselworld) of 1976, and the movie goes on to follow the then-sales director Hannes Pantli through the difficulties he had to face when trying to sell this new watch that IWC conceived for engineers. IWC owns up to cancelled meetings due to the watch being considered “too avant-garde,” engineers simply not going for it, and, worst of all, that “nobody is buying it.” All of this was compounded by the onslaught of cheap quartz luxury copy watches that delivered on accuracy and legibility at a price point that beautifully manufactured Swiss mechanical watches simply could not compete with at the time. Skyrocketing gold prices sure did not help either.
Genta’s genius was clearly unshaken by the quartz crisis: At the height of his creative period, Genta created the Ingenieur SL Reference 1832, featuring a bezel with five recesses and an integrated bracelet. Other watch manufacturers, who had commissioned replica watches wholesale from Gérald Genta, saw the signs of the times. They positioned their integrated bracelet designs as stainless steel luxury sports watches, establishing an entirely new product category in the industry. With the modesty and sobriety of a tool watch manufacturer, IWC chose a different approach and marketed the Ingenieur SL exclusively to engineers in the years to come. However, for this target group, Genta’s design was simply too bold and too visionary. And so, between 1976 and 1983, only 598 pieces were produced and sold.
The movie picks things up long after this troubled launch period as the Ingenieur SL is re-discovered around the turn of the millennium by collectors and enthusiasts. Suddenly, the unspoiled Gérald Genta design reaches top prices at auctions and starts to appear on the wrists of actors, musicians, and star athletes. The green-dial Ingenieur SL in the film is ultimately acquired at an auction by the racing driver’s daughter, who follows in his footsteps on the race track. The short film tells the story of this particular watch as an example of the stories that each of the 598 Ingenieur SL fake watches for men ever produced could tell today.
The short film project was endorsed and supported by Evelyne Genta, long-time life companion and business partner of Gérald Genta, and their daughter, Alexia Genta. Evelyne Genta is also the founder of the Gérald Genta Heritage Association, which pays tribute to Genta’s creative genius while supporting the talent of tomorrow. In the film, Gérald Genta is portrayed by actor Anthony Watterson. IWC’s former Sales Director Hannes Pantli is played by Matt Schaal, and IWC’s former Marketing Director Alexandre Ott by Brett Williams. The director was Rune Milton, who previously directed the cinematic tribute to IWC’s founding story, Born of A Dream (2020). The director of photography was Daniel Voldheim, also known for Presumed Innocent.
Recently, Genta’s Ingenieur SL ref. 1832 got a new lease on life when IWC relaunched the cheap Canada replica IWC Ingenieur watches collection in 2023. At this year’s Watches & Wonders Geneva fair, the brand introduced numerous new references: in response to popular demand, the Ingenieur Automatic 42 debuted in all-black ceramic, including a virtually scratchproof ceramic bracelet, a steel version, 40mm wide, with a yellow-accented green dial that racing driver Sonny Hayes will wear in “F1 The Movie” (in cinemas this summer), another steel variant, 41mm wide, with IWC’s famed perpetual calendar complication, as well as a 40mm wide all-gold reference with a black dial, a perpetual calendar variant, and a 35mm-wide version.
There may have been just under 600 Ingenieur SL super clone watches shop site that could write their own stories in the late ’70s and early ’80s, but thanks to the wholly re-engineered and fresh Ingenieur collection many more get to experience and enjoy Genta’s ingenious design firsthand.