Today, we're going to be talking about Tag Heuer
Carrera. This is going to be a special McLaren 1974 edition.
Welcome back everybody. As I said today, we're going to be talking about this Tag Heuer Carerra.
It is a 1974 McLaren edition. Now I do want to kind of dig into that date because that is not
referring to the watch itself. It's not like a rendition of a 1974 watch. Really what it is is
it's a very iconic year for the company, McLaren. And if you're not familiar with the racing scene,
it is a very high end performance vehicle. And it's something that you'll find on the race track.
You can find them on the streets, not so many on the streets. Of course, if you go to Dubai
it's completely different story, but just, they make really,
really fast cars. And so it's really fitting for Tag Heuer to incorporate it into their
Carrera line because they do have a very large presence in the racing community.
In 1974 was the first year that they won the F1 championship. Of course, that's going to be
Formula 1. We've done a couple of videos, kind of talking about Formula 1, the differences between
those races and some of the other types of races that we have that we carry on in our society when
it comes to four wheeled vehicles. Now in 1974, as I said, they won the championship. Now I do want
to kind of dig into that a little bit because the way that Formula 1works, they kind of break down
these championships completely differently than you would maybe think. So of course they have what
they call a Driver Championship, and then they have the Constructor Championship. And so a Driver
Championship is where some individual race or you name it, the person that's
behind the wheel of the car, they actually score the most points throughout the season.
And of course you don't have to win on the very last race by getting first place to get it, it's
not like you're all in one race. And at the end of it, whoever's in first place wins. It is to an
extent, but it's not just one race. These people go through a bunch of races throughout the season.
And as you score, depending on where you are on the podium, first, second, third,
or even as — not ranks — but the positions that you finish in as they keep going down,
you are awarded fewer and fewer points. So at the end of the year, the driver with the
cumulative most amount of points is deemed the champion for the year. Now I mentioned in 1974,
we've got our first McLaren victory, and this is going to be a Driver Championship.
So the way that you win the Constructor Championship is by the brand itself by
the brand of car. So in this case, it's to be McLaren. So that would mean that McLaren
won, the Driver Championship that year, but to not win the Constructor Championship.
Now, the way that that works is because there are multiple cars on the racetrack that are
going to be developed by the same company. So you might have a couple Ferraris, a few
McLarens we've done some Bentleys before on these videos. You'll have all these different
manufacturers that are on the track. Now, if you're a manufacturer and you've got multiple
vehicles and they all score a high position as a company, you're getting more points
for a race. So it's entirely possible for a company to have Constructor Championships,
but not actually be the winner of the year, not have the Driver Championship.
And that is very similar to how McLaren's history within Formula 1 has been,
they are the second oldest and most successful team in Formula 1 behind Ferrari.
They've got eight Driver Championships and 12 Constructor Championships. Now they've won over
182 races so far. So it's not like it's a one-time fluke. I mean, it's a very dominant team. And of
course this watch is meant to commemorate that first year that McLaren took home the gold.
And so it is a 1974 edition. You'll notice that this watch has a white and orange color scheme
with obviously some black accents as well. But it's very interesting. If you go back
in history and look at the tapes in 1974, the car was not white and orange. In fact,
it was white and red because they had just gotten a deal with Philip Morris — the company Marlboro.
I'm sure we all remember all the all of the advertising that used to come about before
the laws kind of changed well, back in the day, they were huge, huge sponsors. And so of course,
during the Marlboro days, they did have a red and white with black accent
color scheme going on. But in 1981, sometime around there, the company was taken over by Ron
Dennis. He had a completely different approach to kind of how they would handle and manage the team.
It led McLaren into their most successful era with iconic racing legends like Niki Lauda
and Ayrton Senna. They drove for Team McLaren during this epic portion of McLaren's history.
And it was during that time that they actually came out with the orange and white color scheme.
Now going back to the beginning of McLaren it was started by a man named Bruce — Bruce McLaren.
That was his name. He was native to the country of New Zealand. And I did a video a few weeks back on
a Bulgari OCTO. It was a All Blacks version, which is the New Zealand rugby team. And I
made a comment in there about the color scheme of the watch matching the team, which was of course,
black with silver. It was a silver Fern leaf is thethe logo of the team. Well, when Bruce started
McLaren the color scheme that he chose to use was that black and gray. And so I just, I thought
that kind of may wrap it in a little bit, they did transition from the black and gray to there was a
hint of green thrown in there before this orange and white and red and white kinda came into play.
Now, the watch itself is a 43 millimeter case. So it's going to be right in that sweet spot for
today's timepieces, the contemporary watches. It does have, it's made out of stainless steel and
it does have this iconic rubber strap, but it's not just a rubber strap. They use on a
lot of these special additions. They do design them to look like the treads of a tire. So it's
entirely in line with the racing theme. We kind of talked about it
on the Monaco Grand Prix Carrera that I did a video on how to very similar strap.
Now on the back of this one, you'll notice that it does have the exhibition case back.
It's more of a smoked crystal. So you can't really see through it with the kind of clarity that you
can on some of the other watches, but it's enough to really see what's going on inside.
And of course on the back, you've got the 40th anniversary of McLaren
first world championship. It's got one of the logos on there,
some really good information about the watch, like the fact that there were only 1,974 of them made,
this is number 569. So it's definitely a limited production watch. Inside this watch though,
you're going to find the 1887 caliber movement. So that's going to have a 50 hour power reserve,
roughly if you've got the chronic graft engaged, like I have here, that power reserves going to
drop to a little full of sort of 40 hours of force when you're using the chronograph Tag and McLaren,
they came up with a great idea of using, and it's something that we find very common in
chronographs and sport watches, but they use a slight color scheme to differentiate between
your normal time counting hands and the ones that are used on the chronograph.
In this case, all of the chronograph functions are going to be featured with an orange accent on the
hand. So you see this big counting seconds up here. This is going to be my chronograph
seconds so that I can stop and start on the 12 o'clock hour marker. It's a little hidden by
the where the hour hand is, but you'll notice. There we go. That we've got an orange tip
here at the 30 minute counter. We've got an orange tip down here at the 12 hour counter,
of course at nine o'clock. You've got your running seconds and you've got your
standard minutes and hours. And all of those are just going to have a non orange standard hand. And
if you ever get confused, obviously the big hand is generally going to be the chronograph hand,
but they also threw in an orange accent up here on the stop start pusher.
So it just, it really flows nice. It's got a really pleasant
vibe to it. It, it is soft with the white, but it has a little bit of that flare to it with the
orange. It's not quite as in your face as one of the like Omega Planet Oceans, but it does have a
little subtle hint of the orange. And personally, it's one of my favorite colors. So I would love
to get one of these in my collection. I can't do a lot of orange, but if it's just a splash,
I think it can go a long way. Come check it out at SwissWatchExpo before it's gone.