FEATURE: TAG Heuer v Heuer

When is a TAG Heuer not a TAG Heuer? When it's a Heuer of course, and what is a Heuer anyway? And why is it better?

First a little history, Edouard Heuer formed the Heuer Watch Company in 1860 and a watchmaking workshop was opened in St-Imier in the Jura region of Switzerland. If you look on TAG Heuer's website there is a history section which gives you some insight into the various landmarks of the Heuer story, albeit TAG themselves seem keen to 'photoshop' history claiming that in 1887 TAG Heuer patented the oscillating pinion, which tells you pretty clearly that TAG themselves believe there to be no difference between TAG Heuer and The Heuer Watch Company. And yet the distinction persists...

As we know, history is hugely important in watchmaking (and other luxury brands), which is why so many companies buy the names of long defunct watchmakers and resurrect them even if they have no tangible connection to the original company. When you are charging thousands of pounds for your watches these days it is simply not good enough to just be Swiss, to really stake your claim you must be Swiss and have a long and respected history to back up your status. So, it's only natural that TAG Heuer, having bought The Heuer Watch Company would want to subsume the history of the original company (hence the slight re-writing of history mentioned above).

But what of TAG's own history, well... there isn't much to speak of, and certainly none of any relevance to watch making anyway. TAG (or Techniques d'Avant Garde) started out in the aviation business in 1977, and presumably made a fair bit of money out of it. Their Wikipedia page states that they are responsible for manufacturing high performance parts for F1 cars, but I think in actual fact all they did was fund the work which was actually carried out by Porsche.

The company was of course a sponsor of the Williams F1 team before switching it's allegiance to the McLaren team, a partnership which was to last for many years until they moved on once again to become Red Bull Racing's engine sponsor. We will return to this later...

In 1985 TAG acquired the Heuer Watch Company, it's very hard to find much detail about this, but from what I understand Heuer was not exactly doing well at the time, probably as a result of the quartz crisis. Indeed, judging by the early TAG Heuer catalogues, which featured lots of watches which were actually left-over Heuers, their glory days were long behind them. I mean, really...

Strangely there are no plans for TAG Heuer to re-issue the Titanium range!

So at the time of the takeover there probably seemed no great problem with relaunching the brand as TAG Heuer, in fact if it wasn't for the leftover watchstock and parts you wonder if TAG might have dispensed with the name altogether. Of course, in hindsight that would seem like a terrible decision, so perhaps it's lucky they merely suffixed the name.

You have to remember that in the 80s retro was not cool at all, and TAG wanted to be seen as a cutting edge and forward looking company and so it was that their first product was the 'Formula One' quartz watch, available in a multitude of crazy colours. Quite hard to imagine now perhaps that this would be a statement of intent from a Swiss watchmaker, but you have to remember this was the age of the Dire Straits music video and TAG obviously wanted to make their mark being different.

To all intents and purposes, the Formula One was a huge success and even today people love these watches despite the plastic straps and bezels. At the same time you can see right from the start how TAG were putting people's noses out of joint and in fact there are some parallels with Red Bull Racing here, both companies steaming into an established market and causing trouble - no wonder they ended up together, even if it did take another 21 years.

Gradually TAG Heuer phased out the old Heuer models from their range, replacing them with their own original design watches such as the S/EL (later the 'Link' range) and Kirium, but then something strange happened. Heuer watches started selling on the second hand market and TAG, sniffing an opportunity, decided to relaunch the Carrera and then the Monaco as 'heritage' models.

They obviously sold well and over time TAG began introducing new models in the Carrera and Monaco range as well as (briefly) reintroducing the Autavia. The Autavia obviously wasn't a great success as it soon found itself back on the scrap heap, all the more odd then that TAG is relaunching it yet again later this year. Ah, but we'll come to this later...

Of course, this was all very well, but TAG Heuer was supposed to be a cutting-edge, forward looking company, not a backwards looking peddler of retro watches,however nice they may be. I suppose the problem was that as other companies embraced the retro trend and took more and more pride in their long and illustrious history TAG Heuer were left in a bit of a dilemma, at once trying to be modernist and at the same time trying to cover the historical base.

Unfortunately, the slight change in name gave people an easy 'break-point' to focus on and as TAG lost its way a little people started to use it as a convenient way to distance themselves from the brand. I'm sure there are people who genuinely only like the old, original Heuer watches, but anyone who's going to tell me that an early 80's Heuer is better than any TAG Heuer from the last ten years is having a laugh.

I suppose there's an easy parallel to be drawn with cars, people love the Mini and the relaunch has been a huge success, but for every Mini there was a Maxi or an Allegro. In other words, just because the classic Mini was a legend it doesn't make BMC better than BMW (though to be fair if I had to choose I'd rather have a 'proper' Mini, not that ridiculous oversized modern piece of junk!). Truthfully, I hate the new Mini, even though it is undoubtedly superior in quality... and I'm not alone. 

And so it is for TAG Heuer, they know damn well that some of their customers feel the same way about Heuer, and so ideally what they'd probably like to do is split their brand in two. But the problem is, it's not that easy. There have been so many Monaco watches with the TAG Heuer logo on them (including the very modern Monaco 24 series) and the Carrera gene pool is all over the place now, with the Jack Heuer models at one end of the spectrum and the Heuer 02 Tourbillon at the other. The whole thing is a giant mess and far too complex to untangle.

And so it is that Heuer and TAG Heuer co-exist under the same umbrella. JCB is a smart guy and he knows that people who want to spend £4000 on a 'classic' Carrera are more likely to do so if the dial sports a 'Heuer' logo and not a TAG Heuer logo. TAG Heuer is in your face, especially now with their aggressive marketing and association with not only football and the bad boys of F1 (Red Bull) but also with all sorts of random brand ambassadors like Alec Monopoly. 

TAG Heuer wants to appeal to the younger generation and that is why models like the 40th Anniversary Monza came out with a Heuer logo on the dial, it's just marketing your product to the right people. And that's why the new 2017 Autavia will have a Heuer logo on the dial and will more than likely be a huge success. People are peeing their pants about a watch that died on it's arse last time it was re-released, albeit I notice this time TAG have put it in a round case and ditched that awful Speedmaster II abomination - another great move from Mr Biver.

And so it goes on, with the Heuerites sticking their fingers in the ears and pretending that Heuer and TAG Heuer aren't the same at all, when they clearly are. The Monza 40th Anniversary has the Calibre 17 movement inside it, as does the Jack Heuer Carrera pictured above, but guess what else has the exact same movement in it?

G O R G E O U S !

Truth be told, Heuer and TAG Heuer, it's all just marketing and making the best of a messy history. Which is fine, I just wish people didn't act like one is something to be proud of and one is something to be ashamed of. I mean I get that some people probably think the Heuer 01 Skeleton is unspeakably awful, and that's okay. I mean there's plenty of rose gold 'Old Man Carreras' out there (that probably should have a Heuer logo on) that I wouldn't touch with a barge pole. 

Just lets not kid ourselves that Heuer is anything other than what it is, made in the same factories as it's 'black sheep' sibling, by the same people on the same CNC machines. Nobody's sitting in a log cabin handcrafting your Jack Heuer Carrera in 2017, and the sooner we all accept that the better.