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TAG Heuer Carrera, Monaco, and Autavia: champions on the racetrack
TAG Heuer’s chronographs from the 1960s – the golden age of motorsport – are among the most sought-after remakes and re-editions of our time. One example is the Carrera, first presented in 1963 and named after the toughest road race of the day: the Carrera Panamericana Mexico.
![](https://quillandpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/TAG_Heuer_Carrera-CH80.jpg)
TAG Heuer Carrera CH80
The Carrera’s purist, functional dial, designed with intuitive readability in mind by Jack Heuer, founder Edouard Heuer’s grandson and today’s honorary chairman, qualified the model as a textbook watch for races, which became the choice for many professionals.
Throughout the following two decades, the drivers of the Scuderia Ferrari – including Carlos Reutemann, Jacky Ickx, Niki Lauda, and Jody Scheckter – all wore Carreras during their hazardous races.
The Monaco is the second classic chronograph and one of the rare timepieces – perhaps even the first – to gain fame on the silver screen. Worn in 1971 by Steve McQueen in Le Mans, a blockbuster film depicting the famous 24-hour endurance race, it became an instant success. Until today it has remained associated with the legendary actor nicknamed the “king of cool.”
![](https://quillandpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Steve-McQueen-Heuer.jpg)
The actual (TAG Heuer) Monaco worn by Steve McQueen in the film ‘Le Mans’
But this is not the only reason for the Monaco’s stardom: when it was simultaneously unveiled in Geneva and New York in 1969, it was one of the very first chronographs powered by a self-winding movement. Until that moment, watchmakers had not built such a complex caliber to include a rotor for automatic winding.
Back in the 1960s, the construction and production of such a movement was kind of a holy grail, and some big players, among them TAG Heuer, Breitling, Zenith and Seiko, raced against each other to be the first to introduce an automatic chronograph.
The first ones launched in the year of the moon landing were celebrated as milestone innovations. Yet, there was even another quite cool feature about the Monaco that also marked a premiere, namely its square case, which was the first water-resistant one of its kind.
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