Watch Of The Month – TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre Heuer 01

The Carrera Calibre Heuer 01 is the modern face of TAG Heuer: bold, masculine, exotic, and visibly complicated. Current CEO Jean-Claude Biver isn’t shy about admitting he adapted the winning formula from Hublot to supercharge TAG Heuer, but with less expensive timepieces for a younger audience.

What Mr. Biver knows is that today’s younger watch lovers want to show off their love of mechanics, design, engineering, and of course, lifestyle. The Carrera Calibre Heuer 01 collection is the brand’s strongest attempt at doing that, and it works very well.

TAG Heuer will never claim that the roughly 45mm case made mostly of titanium with various finishes is a small watch. The historic Swiss watchmaker transformed the look of the iconic 1960s Carrera into something very modern, whose lineage can be easily determined from the distinctive shape of the lugs.

The TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre Heuer 01 features prominent hour markers and hands floating above an open-worked face that shows much of the movement.

For the dial TAG Heuer wanted everything to be open and visible. Learning from Hublot’s Big Bang watches, the Carrera Calibre Heuer 01 has prominent hour markers and hands floating above an open-worked face that shows much of the movement.

Cleverly, TAG Heuer didn’t actually need to produce a brand new movement, but rather reworked the existing, in-house made calibre 1887 into the Heuer 01 which now includes different coloured and finished parts, as well as the skeletonisation.

Powering the TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre Heuer 01 is the modified version of the calibre 1887 movement with splashes of red detail.

The calibre 1887 automatic chronograph movement is an extremely capable modern workhorse that fits the core utilitarian values of the brand, but is here expressed with a vivid presentation for those people who want to wear a timepiece that is as functional as it is a statement piece. There are of course traditionalists who prefer a more classic, conservative face to TAG Heuer, but given the new (mostly millennials) audience the brand is trying to attract, the Carrera Heuer 01 collection is proving to be a winning collection.

More so, the price of the watch surprises many people who have become used to sky-high retail prices in the watch industry. TAG Heuer is among the first of the major Swiss brands to admit the current economics of the high-end watch industry needs to change.

By focusing on more direct sales to consumers as well as effective internal consolidation of production processes, the average price of a TAG Heuer watch has reduced by almost 10%.

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