An interesting interview with Jack Heuer, he touches on some of the issues they had in the Sixties and Seventies which I think shine a light onto what might have been happening at Breitling as well.
How the Monaco came about was a fascinating glimpse into how watches were designed:
"JH: It was quite simple: we were working for 3-4 years on this Calibre 11 movement, the world’s first automatic chronograph, and we knew that would be a major event. Our Swiss chronograph exports starting tumbling, because in the late 1950s the automatic watch became the call of the day. Knowing this, we prepared in 1967-8 the line that we would be launching in 1969 for the Basel fair.
So we decided to make a Carrera, because the Carrera was already a very good model in non-automatic. We made it in self-winding, but this movement [Calibre 11] was quite a bit thicker, so we had to change the shape a little bit. And then we decided that we need something for our Automotive-Aviation market, so we made the Autavia and we said now we have covered our key markets, why don’t we do something a little more “out-of-the-box”?
In those years it was the case makers, such as Piquarez who would be the creative people. They would have a designer who would make dummies in brass, in a softer material to see how we liked it. So, one day he comes with a square, waterproof case. And he said, “look I have a patent on this waterproof square case,” which had a new system.
Chronographs when they took water, it was a terrible drama because everything rusted and it cost a fortune to get clean. Once they had invented the water resistant push-buttons, we never made any non-water-tight chronographs any more and therefore would couldn’t play with the shapes, because square watches weren’t really water resistant. He had a very clever system, so I negotiated with him an exclusivity- that was my point. I had the exclusive rights in the chronograph market for the square case, as I wanted something that Breitling or somebody like that couldn’t take suddenly."
http://www.calibre11.com/interview-jack-heuer/This was posted at onthedash.com but I've linked directly to the interviewers site.
Bonhams and Tag Heuer have teamed up to tour a vintage collection of Heuers around the world before a sale in December.
http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.s ... tchesheuerIf any members have Heuers it would be great to see them.
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