TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Christophe Babin talks to TIME² in Geneva

Focused and friendly, Jean-Christophe Babin is sporting his oft-photographed TAG Heuer glasses with the bright red arms, and it’s all rather fitting, because what looks like a large warehouse is filled with these enormous one-seater racing cars most of which are red. Transporting the racing cars by boat took six months to plan and they arrived in Geneva last week.

There are also plush cream sofas and black-carpeted, hip bar areas where smooth talking TAG Heuer staff are securing deals with watch retailers from round the world. There’s also a brand new car here. Testimony to TAG Heuer’s 26 year collaboration with racing car manufacturers McLaren, it’s a shiny and new orange-coloured MP4 12C, yours for a cool 250,000 Swiss Francs. Needless to say, there’s a stylish Tag Heuer Carrera watch to match, punctuated with subtle orange detailing.

Tag Heuer’s mission of mastering speed is a project 150 years old and counting. It began in 1860 when Tag Heuer equipped early racing cars with dashboard clocks. A host of horological records and world firsts followed, with the newest being the Mikrographe, the first mechanical watch in the world to break down time, measuring it to the nearest 1/100th of a second.

“The Mikrographe is a new milestone in high end watchmaking,” said Babin. “Obviously people aren’t buying the Mikrographe for its function, but they’re buying a masterpiece of 396 components which we’ve developed in-house - it sits on the edge between watchmaking and art.” Life in the fast lane.

For more information on the world premiere of the TAG Heuer Mikrographe, unveiled at SIHH 2011, see www.time2.co.uk/blog.

For pictures of TAG Heuer's '150 Years of Mastering Speed' exhibition see TIME²'s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/time2watches.