A Week of Icons: Cars, Watches, Pens, and Spirits

This was a week that included cars, watches, and fountain pens. And spirits, and some very good food.

We started at the Ferrari Philippines showroom for the launch of the Montblanc Enzo Ferrari edition pens from the Great Characters editions family. What’s interesting here is that people see all the yellow pens and wonder why they are there, in yellow. In reality, Enzo was more a fan of yellow as his color than he was of red. It was because countries had to have specific colors, and so the Ferrari color became red, which was the color for Italy. The British got green; the Germans, silver. 

From there, we quickly went to the launch of Robb Report Philippines’ Watches and Jewelry Issue at the Manila Peninsula in the Peninsula Suite, and co-hosted by Royal Salute. It was a wonderful evening chatting with old friends, making some new ones, and talking about watches at many different levels.

The next morning saw an early flight to Singapore for the launch of the Lamborghini Temerario with their CEO Stefan Winkelmann. This is a key car in the Lamborghini stable because it takes their electrification program in a direction different from the other vehicles.

Arguably, it defines a whole new type of car, because while it is a high-revving, 10,000 RPM fuel-drinking V8 with two turbochargers, it also has three electric motors, all in a package that handles better than the larger V12s, such as the new Revuelto.

Saturday had us taking a quick trip to the new Porsche At Jewel facility, which will be there to welcome those that are lucky enough to join the Porsche Experience Center program that will be located nearby. The space is right off the exit doors of Terminal 1 inside Jewel. It welcomes you with a view into the world of Porsche, past just cars.

Yes, there was a car there, which makes you wonder how they get them into airports so easily, because they change them regularly. No, they don’t sell cars there, but they do have some amazing merchandise and collaborations (like Cafe Carrera) that have already made this investment successful.

We are currently lobbying for them to sell the books rather than just have them as displays. Otherwise, we have to go back to Stuttgart to get them—which isn’t exactly a bad thing either.

The next two days were all for watches we can’t talk about, but that’s for another discussion.