The racing line: TAG Heuer promo, Speed supplement, GQ, 2012
Revered for transforming the fortunes of Scuderia Ferrari and revolutionising the race timing of Formula One, TAG Heuer’s trackside reputation is matched by its ability to conjure horological masterpieces. Lee Gale speaks to Jack Heuer, TAG Heuer Honorary Chairman, about the brand’s enduring automotive association
[Once a year, GQ ran a TAG Heuer-sponsored ‘Speed’ supplement. I wrote the advertorial features and also sub-edited the whole thing in my spare time – so that would mean being in the office in evenings and Saturdays. I didn’t mind going in at the weekend – you’d get more done. I spoke to the company’s former CEO, Jack Heuer, on the phone for this. I didn’t get a watch for my efforts, but they sent me a bottle of champagne afterwards!]
The terse minimalist Ernest Hemingway once said, “Auto racing, bullfighting and mountain climbing are the only real sports, all others are games.” Tough talk indeed,, but the reality is that danger lurks in even the most mundane sports. Bizarrely, the world’s diciest sporting activity is fishing, which, according to the United Nations, claims 24,000 lives a year. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer.
Even though angling is man’s true sporting nemesis, until the late Seventies motor racing was a highly perilous pastime. “Formula One was much different back then,” Jack Heuer, TAG Heuer’s honorary president recalls. “Racing drivers never knew if they were going to survive until the end of the day. They had one foot in the grave and because of this, they lived it up a little more. TAG Heuer became involved with F1 in 1968, as sponsor of the Swiss driver Jo Siffert. There were some very strong personalities in motor racing. They knew they were taking a risk.”
The most treacherous car race was the short-lived Carrera Panamericana, a 2,000-mile, six-day slog across Mexico that was started in 1950 to celebrate the opening of Mexico’s stretch of the Pan-American Highway, a road that today snakes from Alaska to Argentina. In its five-year existence, the Carrera (Spanish: “race”) accounted for 27 deaths, yet despite the possibility of a grisly demise, drivers from F1, Indycar, NASCAR, drag-racing, hill-climbing, rally, stock cars, plus a smattering of non-professional chancers including car salesmen and store owners, flocked to Tuxtla on the Guatemala border to take part in the ultimate test of a driver’s mettle.
American “land yachts” like Oldsmobiles, Lincolns and Studebakers lined up against high-performance European grand tourers. The Carrera was taken incredibly seriously by manufacturers: in 1951, Ferrari sent a factory team and finished first and second with Ferrari 212 Exports. The race proved a unique adventure. In 1952, German driver Karl Kling won the sports car category in a pre-production Mercedes-Benz 300SL “Gullwing” despite hitting a vulture at 120mph. The collision shattered the windscreen and knocked co-driver Hans Klenk unconscious. With the cockpit decorated in blood, glass and feathers, Kling continued racing until his tyre change 43 miles later.
It was this sort of automotive buccaneering that entranced Swiss watchmaker Heuer, a company involved with motoring since the introduction of its dashboard-mounted Time of Trip chronograph in 1911, an 11cm-diameter device that indicated the exact duration of a journey. Once Jack Heuer became company CEO in 1962 at the age of 30, his first launch was a tribute to the Mexican road race, the Heuer Carrera chronograph, designed by Jack himself. The watch, with its large, easy-to-read face and 1/5th of a second scale on the flange, came with double Incabloc shock protection and large push buttons that could be operated with gloved hands – motor racing was never far from Heuer’s thoughts.
The Sixties proved a seismic decade for Heuer, culminating with the launch of the world’s first automatic chronographs on 3 March 1969 . The Carrera, Autavia and new, radical, square-faced Monaco, all built around the top-secret “Project 99” Calibre 11 movement, were revealed at a press conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva. The high-end Monaco, with its midnight-blue face, was described by Jack Heuer as the equivalent of a “concept car”. IT quickly had the motoring world in raptures once Formula One and Le Mans idol Jo Siffert started wearing the watch, the clamour to own a Monaco began. Only 4,000 were made between 1969-75, so an original Monaco is extremely rare.
“We got into Formula One thanks to Jo Siffert,” explains Jack. “After Jo won the 1968 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, he was a hero in Switzerland. He beat your Jackie Stewart! Jo was from a very poor background, but everyone was talking about him. So we sponsored him. He was a very nice guy and we got on very well. We once drove to Geneva airport in a rented car. It was January, so with the weather conditions, I decided it would be better if Jo was the driver. There were no autobahns, just normal roads… but it was like being in a race. We slid round every corner!”
The Porsche-affiliated Siffert, who had racked up victories in the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring in a “longtail” Porsche 907, became Heuer’s first ambassador, cutting a dashing figure with his slicked back hair, fearless visage and white overalls. Such were Siffert’s credentials that Steve McQueen based his look on the Swiss driver when filming the epic motor-racing movie Le Mans (1971). As Siffert raced a Porsche, so McQueen opted for a flat-12 917, and as Siffert wore a Monaco, naturally McQueen demanded one for his scenes. The Monaco became an intrinsic part of the film.
Tragically, four months after Le Mans was released, Siffert’s Yardley BRM collided with an earth bank, flipped and caught fire at the World Championship Victory Race at Brands Hatch. None of the trackside fire extinguishers were operable and Siffert died in the blaze.
Heuer’s association started with Formula One may have begun with Siffert, but teams had been deploying handheld Heuer manual chronometers since the inaugural F1 race at Silverstone in 1950, usually operated by wives or girlfriends. Formula One had a knack of bringing the best out of Heuer. In 1958, the Ref 52 Multi-Sequence Timing Board was unveiled that consisted of three hand-operated chronometers controlled by a bracket. But it was as official timekeeper for Scuderia Ferrari from 1972 that Heuer flourished, with Swiss electronics engineer Jean Campiche developing the Le Mans Heuer Centrigraph, a push-button electronic keyboard and printer that could record the times of 15 cars down to 1/1000th of a second.
At Ferrari’s private Fiarano track at Maranello in Italy, Campiche was instrumental in improving the performance of F1 Ferraris, setting up a series of 45 photocells around the circuit that allowed engineers to discover where cars were losing power. Acting on the data, results quickly improved. In 1975, Austrian Niki Lauda won the driver’s championship in a Ferrari 312T at Monza. A second title came for Lauda in 1977, while South African Jody Scheckter secured further glory in 1979. Ferrari drivers automatically became Heuer ambassadors and, rather darkly, were presented with a gold Heuer Carrera with the driver’s name and blood group engraved on the back.
“The race timing of Formula One was scandalous in the early Seventies,” Jack reveals. “There would be three people for each team: one for the stopwatch, a second marking the time and the third to calculate the lap time. It was prone to errors. At Ferrari, revolutionised timing. Ferrari wanted accurate timing because they were convinced the French were cheating. We built mechanisms for Ferrari’s private track at Maranello, and then everyone started buying Heuer devices for the pits. From a one-year contract, we sponsored Ferrari for nine years. To see our logo on an F1 Ferrari, in that prime spot just beneath the windshield, it was more than a thrill – it was euphoric. The effect that had on the company was incredible.”
Ferrari drivers automatically became Heuer ambassadors and were presented with a gold Heuer Carrera chronograph with the driver’s name and blood group engraved on the back. The Seventies belonged to Scuderia Ferrari: Niki Lauda won the Drivers’ Championship in 1975 and 1977, then Jody Scheckter gained the title in 1979. Flushed with success, Heuer was printing 200,000 stickers and patches each year. “People would display the Heuer logo on their cars and overalls,” Jack says. “It was as if they had a contract with us!”
In 2012, TAG Heuer will again have motoring enthusiasts’ hearts thumping when, at the Goodwood Festival of Speed (28 June-1 July), a limited edition Speed Collection will be unveiled. Comprising three Carreras, only 250 examples of each will be made. This is also a special year for Jack, who, in the summer celebrates his 80th birthday. Rumours are rife that a commemorative Carrera will honour this milestone.
For somebody who has been so closely involved with speed, perhaps the ideal present for Jack would be a seat on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceflight, which, at 70,000 feet, reaches 2,600mph. After all, the first Western timepiece in space was a Heuer Reference 2915A stopwatch, that, in 1962, was strapped to the wrist of John Glenn during his historic triple orbit of the earth.
“Space? Absolutely not!” laughs Jack. “I had an operation on my ears, so I don’t have good balance. It would make feel sick. What I plan to do is take my family to Edinburgh because my maternal grandfather was a Henderson. We will be tracing our Scottish roots. Spaceflight is the last thing that I would do!” TAG Heuer, take note.
CARRERA HERITAGE
Both Heuer and Porsche registered the Carrera name in recognition of the Mexican Carrera Panamericana road race of 1950-54.
Although the Carrera chronograph was launched by Heuer in 1964, its styling is a continuation of the 1945 Ref 5418, which is today known by TAG Heuer as “Carrera Muse”.
The Carrera story takes another twist in 2012 as four special editions will be launched in summer.