Case #675 — International Watch Company Portuguese Chronograph Ref. IW371401

Case #675 — IWC Portuguese Chronograph "3714"

Ref. IW371401

Status: Available

Condition: Good Pre-Owned

Scope: Box and Papers — Box, Manuals, and Original Polishing Cloth (No Warranty Card)

Year: Unknown

🔎 Case Notes

Some watches argue for attention. The Portuguese Chronograph simply removes everything that would get in the way of the dial. A very thin bezel, a wide silvered face, a railway-track minute chapter, applied gold-tone Arabic numerals, slim leaf hands, and two recessed registers stacked on the vertical axis — 12 and 6, perfectly symmetrical, with no date window to break the balance. It is one of the cleanest chronograph layouts in modern watchmaking, and it has barely changed since the reference arrived.

This is the IW371401: the silvered-dial, gold-toned execution in stainless steel, on a leather strap with a folding clasp, sized for real-world wear at roughly 41 mm. One of the reasons for the 3714's success was its relatively compact case — while 43 mm and larger are common elsewhere in the Portugieser collection, this version stayed at 40.9 mm. The warm gold-tone numerals against the silvered dial give the watch its dressier character; the chronograph pushers and generous crown keep it from ever looking precious.

Condition is graded Good Pre-Owned. On inspection the watch presents in very nice pre-owned shape, with minor wear visible throughout — the honest marks of a watch that has been worn rather than stored. On the timing machine at BST it measured +2 seconds per day with 279° of amplitude. Those are results from our own bench, not a claim about how it will perform in every position or over the long term.

It arrives with its box, manuals and the original IWC polishing cloth. There is no warranty card with this example, and we make no claim to one. The strap is fitted with a deployant-style folding clasp and is currently sized to an approximately 7¾-inch wrist.

🕰️ The Evidence

• Reference: IW371401
• Model / Collection: IWC Portuguese Chronograph (Portugieser Chronograph, ref. 3714 family)
• Year: Unknown
• Case: Stainless Steel
• Case Diameter: Approximately 41 mm (the 3714 is specified at 40.9 mm)
• Thickness: Approximately 12.3 mm
• Lug-to-Lug: Approximately 47 mm
• Lug Width: 20 mm
• Dial: Silvered dial with applied gold-tone Arabic numerals, outer minute chapter ring, and two recessed subdials with printed Arabic markings
• Crystal: Sapphire — convex, with anti-reflective treatment on the 3714 case specification
• Bezel: Stainless steel, fixed, ultra-thin profile
• Crown: IWC-signed
• Caseback: Solid steel, screwed
• Movement: Automatic chronograph. The 3714 used the self-winding calibre 79240 up until 2007, after which the calibre 79350 was fitted. Because this example's production date is not documented, we do not state which of the two it carries
• Power Reserve: 44 hours
• Functions: Hours, minutes, small seconds, chronograph with 30-minute counter. Relative to a standard 7750, the 12-hour counter is removed, small seconds sits at 6 o'clock rather than 9, and the date mechanism is deleted entirely.
• Water Resistance: 30 metres as specified for the reference — as with any pre-owned watch of unknown service date, we recommend pressure testing before water contact
• Strap: Leather strap
• Clasp: Deployant / folding clasp
• Bracelet Fit: Approximately 7¾-inch wrist
• Measured on BST's timing machine: +2 seconds per day, 279° amplitude
• Condition: Good Pre-Owned — minor wear visible throughout
• Included: Box, manuals, and original polishing cloth. No warranty card

🌟 Collector Provenance

The 3714 was introduced in 1998 as a more accessible counterpart to the split-seconds ref. 3712. That lineage matters: the design language, proportions and dial architecture came from a serious chronograph, and the 3714 inherited them while trading the rattrapante complication for an automatic movement and a far broader audience. It shared the same case, dial and display as its more complicated sibling; the difference lay in the functions.

What followed is unusual in modern watchmaking — a design left almost entirely alone. Across some twenty-two years of production the watch changed hardly at all, aside from occasional dial variations. The Portugieser line as a whole has undergone very few changes beyond new dial colours. Collectors tend to treat the 3714 as the reference point for the entire family: the version that defined what a Portugieser chronograph looks like before the in-house 3716 arrived to take over the role.

Within the 3714 family, the silvered-dial-with-gold-tone-numerals execution is the archetype — the configuration most people picture when the model is mentioned. WatchBase records reference IW3714-01 as a stainless steel case with a silver dial, sitting alongside black-dial and blue-numeral siblings in a long catalogue of variations. Buyers who want the warm, dressier reading of the design rather than the cooler blued-numeral version generally end up here.

🌟 Technical Provenance

The interest in this movement lies in what IWC took away. Calibre 79350 is a modified Valjoux 7750 running at 4 Hz with 31 jewels and a 44-hour power reserve, finished with Côtes de Genève and perlage, driving hours, minutes, small seconds and a 30-minute chronograph counter with hacking seconds. The base movement was extensively reworked to meet IWC's requirements.

The consequences are visible every time you look at the dial. Moving small seconds from 9 to 6 o'clock and deleting the 12-hour counter produces the two-register vertical symmetry, and removing the date mechanism means there is no "ghost" position on the crown. That is a deliberate and slightly expensive decision: most brands using this base leave the date in place because it costs nothing to keep. IWC chose the cleaner dial.

The calibre changed hands mid-life, with the 79240 serving until 2007 and the 79350 taking over thereafter — the two are essentially identical apart from finishing and rhodium-plated rather than gilded bridges. Either way, the owner gets a 7750-derived chronograph with an enormous global service network and a reputation for tolerating decades of real use. As one specialist review put it, there was "nothing wrong with the old calibre 79350."

🧾 From the Case File

Practically speaking, this is one of the easier luxury chronographs to live with. At roughly 41 mm across, about 12.3 mm thick and around 47 mm lug to lug, it sits under a shirt cuff without negotiation and reads as a dress watch from across a room, yet it still has working chronograph pushers when you need them.

The absence of a date is a genuine feature rather than a shortcoming for many owners: a watch you can put on after two weeks in the box without resetting anything except the time. The 30-minute counter covers the intervals people actually time — parking, cooking, meetings, a run — and the central seconds hand sweeping across that wide silvered dial is the whole point of the layout.

The 20 mm lug width means straps are simple to source, and the deployant clasp fitted here protects the leather from the daily bending that kills tang-buckle straps. The strap is currently sized to an approximately 7¾-inch wrist; smaller wrists will want a resize, larger wrists should ask us first.

Condition is graded honestly at Good Pre-Owned with minor wear throughout — this is a watch to wear, not a safe-queen. Against that, it measured +2 seconds per day with 279° amplitude on our bench, and it comes with the box, the manuals and the original polishing cloth. It carries no warranty card, and we would rather say that plainly than describe it as anything other than what it is.

🗝️ BST Verdict

The 3714 is the Portugieser chronograph that everything else in the family is measured against — a symmetrical, date-free, thin-bezelled design that IWC saw no reason to alter for more than two decades. This is that design in its most familiar and most flattering form: silvered dial, gold-tone numerals, steel case, leather and folding clasp.

Worn condition, honestly graded, with strong numbers on the timing machine, its box, manuals and original cloth. A well-used example of a design that was never improved upon so much as replaced.

👉 Every case deserves a closer look.