This week, watch guru Gisbert Brunner considers the famous ‘Carrera’ from motor racing watch specialist of the 60s and 70s, Heuer.

The 1960s was a decade of intense activity for the Heuer company. With the introduction of the new range of chronographs titled ‘Carrera’ - after the famous Mexican road race - the world of motor sport finally had an accurate timing device that could be worn on a wrist. It was Jack Heuer himself who decided to increase the diameter of the glass by 2mm, thus giving the new chronograph's face an additional ring of 1/5 sec increments.

The first, manual-wind Carrera was launched in 1963 and the watch was soon available with a variety of dials (white, black, black and white, etc.). Towards the end of that decade, an automatic version was introduced.

The model is still a significant one in TAG Heuer’s range and the company is constantly developing new versions, such as the Mikrograph 1/100th of a second chronograph you can see in this video.

Our next watch in the series will be the 'Classic' from Hublot.

Icons of watchmaking history -

No. 1: Audemars Piguet Royal Oak

No. 2: Breitling Navitimer

No. 3: Bvlgari-Bvlgari by Bvlgari

No. 4: Cartier Santos

No. 5: Chronoswiss Regulator


Text: Gisbert L. Brunner
Photo: Heuer