B.R.M Chronographes

Bernard Richards began his path into watchmaking at just 14, when his parents, professional jewellers, expanded their business into watches and founded the high-end brand Richards Zeger; Richards trained across various watchmaking, micromechanics, and jewellery schools as he grew into the family trade, and in 1986 established his own B.R.M manufacture, producing clocks, watches, pens, and lighters for major international luxury houses. It was not until 2003 that Richards, passionate about both watchmaking and motorsports and unable to find a mechanical watch on the market that matched his own vision, drew the first sketches of what would become the debut B.R.M Chronographes watch — a company built explicitly on his family's generational legacy and his own desire for independence.

The manufacture operates from the French Vexin Regional Park near Paris, deliberately far from Switzerland's Vallée de Joux, drawing inspiration from the region's rolling roads and motoring history. In recognition of its craftsmanship, B.R.M has been awarded France's 'Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant' (Living Heritage Company) label, and describes itself as the only French manufacture to control every stage of watch production in-house — machining components from solid material, printing its own bespoke dials, and carrying out its own engraving. The workshop runs a fleet of fourteen CNC machines, some working up to eleven axes, achieving precision to within a hundredth of a millimetre, and works across carbon, titanium, Makrolon polycarbonate, black PVD, and ceramics; every skeleton movement, whether built on a Swiss-made base or B.R.M's own manufactured calibre, is hand-openworked by the in-house team, and clients can further customise their watch through engraving, bespoke UV-printed dials, and hand-applied, oven-cured epoxy lacquer.

B.R.M's design language draws directly from motorsport: piston-shaped cases, numerals styled after racing-car digits, skeletonised hands echoing vintage steering wheels, and perforated 'porthole' leather straps recur across the range. Two engineering signatures stand out. The Shock Absorber system, introduced on the V6-SA and V12-SA, suspends the movement on three semi-reclined dampers to protect it during active wear; the 2022 FF39-40, or 'Full-Floating,' goes further still, fully suspending the movement against both vertical and horizontal shocks using silent blocks and belts inside a titanium case, with 38 hours of reserve.

The brand's model history traces a consistent run of firsts: the original GP44 (2003), machined on the company's first CNC lathe in a barn workshop; the V6 and V12 (2004), still among the brand's bestsellers two decades on; the R50 (2006), the first watch with its movement floating on three carbon triangles; the Birotor (2007), fitted with seven crystals offering a view of the movement from all six sides; the DDF6 and DDF12 (2016), their titanium cases directly inspired by racing brake discs; and the Boat Master collection (2023), built around a nautical, sailing-inspired theme. Today the range spans the core Racing line — including the V6, V6-SA, V12, V7, V3, V5-25, V8, MK, DDF6, DDF12, V12-SA, and V17 — alongside the Art Car, Aero, Boat Master, and Golf collections, a Martini Racing livery partnership, ongoing Limited Editions, and a dedicated Heritage line preserving earlier references.

The MK-44, launched in 2012 and billed at the time as the lightest automatic chronograph in the world, remains one of the clearest expressions of B.R.M's engineering approach: a hybrid case combining transparent Makrolon polycarbonate with heavily skeletonised titanium, water-resistant to 100 metres and weighing around 48.8 grams complete. Reviewing a White dial, Light Blue-handed version in 2026, aBlogtoWatch's Ariel Adams noted the shock-absorber-mounted, skeletonised Swiss ETA Valjoux 7753 automatic chronograph inside — its date function deliberately removed for a cleaner dial — running at 4Hz with roughly two days of reserve, its hands, movement accents, and perforated strap all colour-matched, priced at 12,501 USD.