20th July, 2010. This is a watch with a seriously long name, and its also been a seriously long time in coming. In fact it's taken Porsche 40 years to develop a timepiece to celebrate the company's domination at the 1970 Le Mans race. That year Porsche took home the first, second and third positions with the legendary 917 K racecar.

It was Porsche's first overall win at Le Mans, and to do it with such dominance really hammered home the fact Porsche was now a top competitor on the circuit. In fact currently Porsche has won the race more times than any other manufacturer.

Anyway, enough history. The Porsche Design P6612 Dashboard Le Mans 1970 Limited Edition was developed to commemorate the events of 40 years ago, and as such the watch is styled to look a little like the dashboard of the 917 K racer. Offset on the face, one of the dials is decorated with the number 23. This was the number of the race winning car piloted by Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood.

Only 917 examples of the watch are scheduled for construction. The black minute and hour hands feature a coating of white luminous material, while the seconds stop hand is red and bears a white tip. The tachymeter scale can be used to compute the speed – between 60 and 330 km/h – traveled over one kilometre. Although most people will probably prefer to still use the speedometer actually mounted in the car!

The 12-hour counter at 9 o'clock and the 30-minute counter at 6 o'clock are picked out in red, while the small seconds hand at 3 o'clock rotates against a white background and bears the start number 23. The case of the P´6612 Dashboard Le Mans 1970 is fashioned from brushed and polished titanium complemented by push-pieces and a screw-down crown with "Clous-de-Paris" motif.

Included with the watch is a small scale model of the 917 K, and also a booklet personally signed by the drivers Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood.