Last year Tag Heuer marked the 60th anniversary of its Carrera Chronograph by relaunching the watch with a freshened-up design.
Legacy brands lucky enough to have a hero product like a Carrera in their portfolios face an ongoing problem.
How to present a decades-old, bestselling design in a fresh and exciting new light – ie: sell more of them – but not so fresh and exciting it puts people off what they liked about it in the first place. (You don’t redesign a Porsche 911 from scratch.)
Tag Heuer passed that test with distinction.
Its first ‘new’ anniversary Carrera of 2023 was a tribute to a much-loved edition – reference 2447SN, with its panda dial layout.
Originally released in 1968, it’s a model heralded by noted Heuer collector Jeff Stein as the 'Holy Grail' of the Carreras.
Aside from a modern movement and a larger case, last year's re-edition was faithfully similar to the 1960s original. Simple, uncluttered design with a vintage Heuer logo, the word ‘Swiss’ on the counter at 6 o’clock and a beautiful silver sunray tone on the dial.
Most notable was a new way of executing the watch crystal, something the brand called ‘glassbox’.
This was a larger, bezel-less construction, so the sapphire crystal went straight into the case, a design touch that called to mind the vintage acyclic crystals of yesteryear.
The whole thing pleased hardcore watch nerds, and it pulled in a newer (younger) audience, too.
Further retro-inspired Carreras followed – the ‘Skipper’ being one of Esquire's favourite watches of 2023.
All in all, Tag Heuer had an excellent year.
Having Ryan Gosling as a brand ambassador who wore Carreras promoting Barbie and in Barbie – sometimes three of them at the same time – didn’t harm the brand one bit either.
Now Tag Heuer has released its first new Carrera chronographs of 2024.
The new watch comes in two editions, both with what the brand calls ‘a teal green monochrome look’. One features an unusual ‘Dato’ dial layout, with the date window at 9 o’clock and a single sub-register at 3 o’clock counting elapsed time in 30-second intervals. Originally used on the reference 3147N model from 1966, this single large register design earned the model the nickname ‘Cyclops’.
The other version features subdials at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock and a tourbillon at 6 o’clock.
Both stick with the new ‘glassbox’ crystal construction.
The ‘Dato’ version keeps things minimal and uncluttered. That lack of extraneous text on the dial – just ‘Tag Heuer Carrera’ at 12 o’clock and the simple ‘Swiss’ at 6 o’clock – harking back to unfussy mid-century watch design.
Teal green might not be everyone’s first choice of dial colour – then again, watches are still enjoying their anything-goes era – but the oddball asymmetrical chronograph layout we’re one-hundred-percent behind.
And it all goes to show Tag Heuer still having fun (but not too much fun) remixing the hits.
Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph, £6,000; Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph Tourbillon, £20,950; tagheuer.com
