Time travel – How the Heuer Monaco is inherently linked to motorsport

elbeik · May 13, 2016

Over the last 45 years, the Heuer Monaco has found fame everywhere from the racetracks of the world to the hugely popular television series, Breaking Bad. But the story of the most famous square watch is far from a fairy tale…
While Jack Heuer’s eponymous company was secretly developing the Calibre 11, the world’s first automatic chronograph movement, together with Breitling and Hamilton in the early 1960s, it secured a radical square case from an external supplier in order to one-up its competition. The watch was the Monaco – named in honour of the historic circuit on the streets of the glamorous principality – and with its large square case, revolutionary movement and unusual left-hand crown, it was groundbreaking.

The Monaco’s legend was not sealed there and then, however. It was, of course, Steve McQueen who immortalised the timepiece in his role as Michael Delaney in the 1971 racing thriller Le Mans. The ever-savvy Jack Heuer had orchestrated one of the first non-motorsport Formula 1 sponsorship campaigns with Jo Siffert, and the production company behind Le Mans sought inspiration from the Swiss driver for McQueen’s character in the film. Hence McQueen wore near identical overalls to those worn by Siffert in his Gulf-Wyer Porsche years, complete with the Heuer badge stitched onto his chest and a Heuer timepiece, more specifically the Monaco, affixed to his wrist.

Through no fault of its own, the Monaco’s success was short-lived. The quartz revolution hit the traditional watchmaking industry hard in the mid-1970s, and the Monaco was axed. It wasn’t until 1997 that the watch re-emerged, as a vintage Heuer re-edition, and until 2003 that it was reinstated into the standard model range. Since then, we’ve seen numerous variants and special editions of the famous watch, including the extraordinary belt-driven Monaco V4 and the futuristic Monaco Twenty Four. The traditional blue-faced Monaco is still the most popular, however – one even made an appearance in the hugely successful television series Breaking Bad. Inherently linked to motorsport, the Monaco will always be considered one the finest timepieces ever created, just as the principality after which it is named will always find a slot on the Formula 1 calendar.

https://www.classicdriver.com/en/ar...uer Monaco is inherently linked to motorsport

Hubert · May 14, 2016

Read the story earlier today; reminded me of an old interview @DC had with Jack Heuer.
http://www.calibre11.com/interview-jack-heuer/

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 Piquerez who were 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.

So, he gave me this exclusivity and then we launched the product [the Monaco]…and it was basically a failure!

– Jack Heuer

Calibre11 · May 15, 2016

The only part that I wouldn't agree with is that the Monaco's failure was "no fault of it's own" and was due to the quartz crisis. Certainly the quartz crisis didn't help, but the Monaco was too radical for it's day...plenty of examples of what we now consider iconic designs that were failures when launched.

The Silverstone was an attempt to "soften" the design theme of the Monaco into something more mainstream.