Answering a vintage Heuer riddle- 5+ years on...

One of the first posts at Calibre 11 was an article that noted a catalogue scan at Chuck Maddox website showing an alternative version of the Heuer Chronomatic Autavia/ Monaco/ Carrera. The catalogue scan showed a different dial configuration to the famous dial layout we know.

At the time, the view was that this was just the ad company using its imagination and that these watches didn't exist...but more than five years later we see that in fact these watches are real. A Swiss collector posted the photo over at Chronocentric.com, answering one of questions we posted way back in 2009.

http://www.calibre11.com/alternative-version-of-the-chronomatic-heuers/

@George C. remember discussing this three years ago!

David, now let's find an 1163 GMT with the Monaco hands blueish lume and 3-6-9-12 hour subdial, do you know which one I'm talking about there's an Ad for it. This finding has just made me a believer that they had to start with a physical prototype somewhere...

Think I know the one- do you have a photo?

Here it is...


From OTD

That certainly looks like a photo of a real watch, while the early Chronomatic ad looked more like a mock-up by an artist. I would have thought there was a higher chance of the GMT Autavia being real than the alternative Chronomatic!

I know but I believe it was discussed before on OTD and no one has yet to see one of these GMT in the flesh. I wonder if our friend Arno M. Haslinger could shed some light on this one...