When I look for movies to watch, I start by the director of the movie, not by the actors whom are in the movie. Christopher Nolan's movies have been pretty interesting to me most of the time. And like you, when I look at the watch, I look at the movement first too.
We certainly allow discussion about pricing if it contributes to the aficionado experience. But if the article is just about auction values, or market prices and not much else, then we generally try to stay away from "purely price" discussions.
I personally agree with you, someone we know who can afford $8K can afford $11K. But we're also from a top looking down perspective. There are people from the bottom looking up who may find the gap of $8K vs $11K to be quite substantial. Percentage wise, that's 40% too, a huge percentage! And often, people set the budget "around 10K Euros/Pounds/Francs/Dollars" and thus $11,700 (almost $12K USD) sometimes will get excluded. Of course, people will stretch if they really like it. But again, we are probably looking at it from the top to down perspective. But someone less experienced in watch collecting may look at it from a bottom to up perspective and may think that the increase is more substantial.
You and I have been at this game a while. I highly suspect that IWC will launch a new INGENIEUR model in a few years that features an even better movement, slightly reworked dial, and other improvements - at an even higher price. And I think that will satisfy me and you. Look at the Chopard Alpine Eagle with the LUC 96 movement (the one with the pink dial)! This one is priced about 60% more due to the higher end movement. And nobody is complaining about that! In fact, when I tried on the Alpine Eagle, I said, "put the 1.96 series movement from LUC in here and I'd buy it." Well, they kind of did exactly that. I have a feeling IWC will do something similar. Make some refinements, put in a better movement, up the price, and soon I'll be knocking at their front door, credit card in hand, panting like a dog, "can I try it? Oh, I like it, here's my credit card."
Thank you Christian for the thoughtful post! And enjoy the LF! Any LF is a true watch aficionado's piece.