Fresh from the Showcase here at SwissWatchExpo, we are talking about the Tag Heuer Carerra.
If you're not familiar with this, watch, it really is one of the premier Chronograph watches
in the world.
If you think about the Rolex Daytona, you think about the Omega Speedmaster or the Breitling
Navitimer.
This really goes hand in hand with those watches.
And a lot of, a lot of the history of watches is really more intertwined than you might
think at first glance.
Now, this watch is really important in the history and the development of the Chronograph.
As we know it now, which is arguably along with the dive watch something like a Rolex
Submariner, really the two most prominent segments of the Swiss watch industry.
At this point, the career has started as the brainchild of Jack Heuer.
It wouldn't exist without him.
He was the fourth generation Heuer to head up the company that bears his family's name.
I think they started the company in 1863, but by the 1960s, he was the fourth one to
come along.
He was not really a watchmaker by trade.
He wasn't, I watched designer by trade.
He had been to, engineering school and architecture school.
He was obsessed with the modern idea of the simplicity of form following function.
So he was all about the idea that something should be designed to look in such a way that
it would perform its function at the highest level that it possibly could know.
So when he met some prominent, race car drivers at the 24 Hours of Sebring in 1962.
It was like a change to his mental
outlook on the world of what was involved and what was needed in the world of wrist
watches.
Yeah, they kind of let him know about the Formula 1 world, which was becoming extremely
popular.
They had let him know that there were some, some races that were extremely exciting.
One of them was the Carrera Panamericana which was a race in Mexico that was notoriously
dangerous and adventurous.
In only five years that it ran , 27 people died in this race.
I mean, it was a crazy race.
They finally discontinued it in 1955 because of the risk, but he liked the name of it and
he liked the name Carrera Panamericana because the name Carrera sounds good in just about
any language.
So, he came home with the idea that he was going to design a tool watch or a Chronograph.
Omega was already out with their Speedmaster from 1957.
Rolex was just about to release the sort of Daytona named
named watch in '63 - '64.
And so he decided that this was, a major player that he could play into.
So back then in the 60s watch companies didn't so much produce an entire watch in the house.
They might get the case from a case supplier, the movement from a movement supplier, the
dial from a dial company, the crystal from a crystal company, the strap from a strap
company.
And it was what was commonly done in the industry.
It's really not so much now.
Now there's a big push for companies to make everything in-house, but then there was a
lot more, kind of cross-pollination between some of these watches.
So if you look back at the original Heuer Carerra watches, they actually have the same
dial from the Rolex Daytona and the Omega Speedmaster of the time they were made by
the same company.
It was a dial company called Singer.
And if you look at the fonts, they're exactly the same.
The sub-dials are exactly the same.
The Baton markers are exactly the same.
And so that's why there was a kind of a constriction on the creativity that was involved because
it would cost a lot extra say to make a different shape case than what the case companies were
already making.
So you kind of picked a case, modified it a little bit, pick the dial, modified it a
little bit.
And that's how he came out with this watch.
So in '63, when the Carrera came out, the notable design elements were already in place
that you can see here.
It had the beveled lugs had just started.
It had the crown guards, which was common.
The ring around the dial was a new invention at the time to hold the crystal in and Jack
Heuer decided that he would go ahead and paint the indices on that ring.
So it would do double duty and it would clean up the dial.
A lot of the Chronographs at the time were used for military applications, for artillery,
for timing, calculating distances, that sort of thing.
And the dials were very confusing to look at because there was a lot on them.
So he really wanted to clean up the dial, make it a watch that you could really be going
very, very fast in your race car and still have immediate legibility.
The world of sports cars was very different in the 1960s than it is now, like having a
little wrist computer on your wrist that, could calculate time, average speed.
That sort of thing really would've come in handy.
The modern watches, it's interesting.
They didn't start until 1996.
And the reason for that is that even though the Carreras were made all the way through
the early 80s.
At that time, when the company changed management, they were sold to Tag which stands for Techniques
d'Avant Garde .
They were a company that were involved in all sorts of high-tech materials, aviation
racing, and they produced some lower-end watches through the 80s.
And then all of a sudden in 1996, they decided that they wanted to relaunch the Carrera,
which hadn't been made in 10 or 15 years.
They actually had Jack Heuer come back and relaunch his own watch.
And so in '96, they did it very similarly to the way he had done it.
Originally in the 60s, the movement is the Caliber 16.
You can see it here.
And at that time, the Caliber 16 was sourced.
We’ve talked before about the Valjoux 7750 ETA movement . It's one of the Bulletproof
workhorse movements in the watch world.
It's found in probably well over a hundred models use the same movement because it's
so well-designed.
And just about any time that you see three registers in a sub-dials in this shape, and
then the date on a Chronograph, most of the time, it's a Valjoux 7750 based watch.
They have a distinctive feel when you push the start-stop pusher on the top and the reset
at the bottom, it has kind of a real chunk feel to it when you push it.
It's very positive feel.
Some people don't like it.
I actually like it because it really feels like you've done something and you know, for
sure when you've, when you've hit it, when you started, when you've stopped.
It's one of the greatest movements ever made.
You can see here ranging from about 41 to 43 millimeters.
We've got a few different iterations of this watch, the same kind of design with a lug
shape, the no crown guards, the inner ring, the Valjoux 7750 based movement.
And there are some titanium models titanium with PVD coating.
A lot of variety.
As far as design, you can really personalize your career by what color scheme you like.
They have some of them with alternate colored sub-dials, like this one, the original Carrera
had the same color sub-dials to set it apart from what they were doing over at Rolex.
But, when the automatic Chronograph came out in 1969, the case that, Jack Heuer decided
to put it in was of course the Carerra.
So, that conglomerate, that included Hamilton, Breitling, Paul Du Prie, and Heuer when they
came out with the first automatic Chronographs in 1969, this is the watch that had it.
So this watch really ranks right up there with the Speedmaster and the Daytona and the
Navitimer as one of the most important Chronographs.
And yet it's a bargain here at SwissWatchExpo.
Our certified pre-owned watches are serviced, they're tested they're timed, they're going
to work perfectly.
They're going to look for the most part.
Like they've never been worn although have some character marks.
That's just part of the history of the watch, but you can definitely pick out something
unusual.
One of the most unusual ones we've got here.
This uses the newer in-house movement, the Caliber 1887.
And this was a Japan domestic market only watch that was to celebrate the 100th anniversary
of the Chronograph.
Something that Heuer had been involved in since their very beginning, they did all sorts
of professional timing devices before they even got into the watch world.
But you can see this one, the movement is turned sideways.
The crown and pushers are here on the top.
There were only 200 of that watch made.
And then here we have one that uses the same movement.
This is, and again kind of a historic throwback watch, but you can see it has a different
layout of the sub-dials.
Again, this is the in-house 1887.
The newest version of the traditional Carrera look, is going to involve in-house movements
there, the Caliber 01 and Caliber 02.
You'll see these in 1887, where most of these watch companies are bringing everything in-house.
And that's what you'll see at Tag Heuer as well.
But we always have a nice selection of the ones with the Caliber 16 based Valjoux 7750.
And they’re really a great price.
So check them out and give us a call, click the bell, click the like, leave your comments,
tell us which one of these dial combinations you like, like the Carerra Chronographs.
One of the most important Chronographs ever made.