TAG Heuer Monaco

History

The Tag Heuer Monaco collection, an indomitable force in the world of fine watchmaking, was initially crafted in 1969 to honour the Monaco Grand Prix, the Formula One motor race held each year at the Circuit de Monaco. This watch rewrote history by introducing specifications the world had not imagined yet. It became the first square-cased water-resistant watch to be designed that held a chronograph. Driven by the celebrated chronomatic calibre 11, it also won accolades for being the initiator of automatic square-cased chronograph timepieces.

Design

Monaco, a star of the brand, presents technical mastery in every facet of its design. The collection stands united in most of its features such as the pair of push buttons placed at the 2 and 4 o'clock position on the watch case, and the minute and hour counters on the dials generally positioned at the 9 and 3 o'clock hour-markers respectively. Most Monaco watches sport a hand-applied date window at 6 o'clock, safely substituting the hour-marker without disrupting the legibility of the dial. Routinely unique in all aspects, the watch features diamond-tipped hour indexes instead of painted numerals. These watches are characteristically square cased and the crown is typically placed at the 3 o'clock marker on the timepiece's case as opposed to the 9 o'clock position in the original model. All Monaco timepieces boast robust and powerful in-house movements. The revolutionary Monaco V4 became the world's first timepiece with a belt-driven transmission.

Associations

Monaco reached tremendous heights of popularity in the famous 1971 car racing film, Le Mans, where star Steve McQueen wore the then one-year-old watch on his wrist to increase the accuracy of his race car driver role. Jo Siffert, Formula One driver, being a TAG Heuer spokesperson himself, advised him to do so. Due to this association, one of the watch models the Monaco 1133 is commonly nicknamed the McQueen Monaco. Monaco, even after two scores, continues to dominate the watch-making world with its finesse and class.