SPOILER ALERT!

TAG Heuer

Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA (“LVMH,” France) owns TAG Heuer [Loreto].

In 2017, WatchTime reported that Paris-based LVMH was “the largest luxury-goods group in the world [Deshpande].

The conglomerate owns dozens of brands in the liquor, cosmetics, fashion, and watches and jewelry businesses. It also has an extensive retail division, with more than 3,000 stores worldwide. [The] publicly traded company had total sales of €29.15 billion ($37.69 billion) in 2013. Its watches and jewelry division made up €2.78 billion ($3.59 billion) of that …. Its biggest watch brand is TAG Heuer, one of the top-selling Swiss brands.

The Morgan Stanley Swiss Watch Industry Report for 2023 listed LVMH as key part of a “polarization” that is “configured as a sort of oligopoly. Swiss watchmaking is in the hands of four main groups that together hold 75.9% of the market share by retail sales value.” LVMH then held 5.8% of the absolute total.

The watchmaker itself has traced its origin to 1860, when Edouard Heuer (1840-1892) “opened his watch making shop on the family farm, at Saint-Imier [Switzerland], producing pocket watches, mostly in silver” [TAG Heuer]. But this company may be one of the more unique among watchmakers in that modern devotees (and the 007 association) name its last family-member-head, Jack Heuer, as genius behind its ongoing importance as a brand [de Burton].

Select Horology

In 1864, the company moved “to Brugg, where it operated under the name Edouard Heuer & Compagnie. The third location came in 1867,” with a move to Bienne, and operations would remain for more than a century [TAG Heuer].

Early on, Heuer saw an opportunity to develop accurate pocket chronographs to time increasingly important sporting competitions. “The company began to produce large quantities of chronographs, which were used to time races on roads, cinder running tracks and over water.” In 1887, it patented an improved “oscillating pinion,” which would allow chronographs “to start and stop instantly with the use of a push-button.” And, by “streamlining the movement design, the oscillating pinion simplified the chronograph’s assembly and maintenance.”

Up until 1940, “Heuer produced many watches and chronographs that either had no brand name on the dial or, in some instances, showed only the name of the distributor. From 1940, Heuer would put its name on every dial, with the movements also being marked ‘Ed Heuer.’ The Heuer brand provided a strong advantage in selling the company’s range of chronographs.”

In 1958, “Jack Heuer [Heuer] formally joined Ed Heuer & Co SA as fourth-generation leader of the family business. The company discontinued sales of conventional wristwatches and focused on wrist chronographs, stopwatches and dashboard timing instruments for use in races and rallies.” At one point in a November 19, 2023, feature for The Edge Magazine, his contribution as “Master Marketer” was highlighted.

Jack had many talents, but one of his biggest strengths was his marketing acumen. His passion for motorsport led to sponsorship deals with Formula I manufacturers, who placed the Heuer logo on their cars, …. These partnerships and product placements boosted brand visibility, setting the stage for future luxury brand sponsorships …. Jack also saw the value of getting his watches on the wrists of Hollywood film stars. Fun fact: if actors wanted to keep one of his watches, all they had to do was ‘send a signed photo of themselves dedicated to Jack Heuer and they they could keep the watch ….’

The TAG Heuer website would also have visitors know that, during his tenure, “astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth and the first man to wear a Swiss timepiece in space,” on February 20, 1962.

A Heuer stopwatch strapped to his wrist timed his 4 hour, 56 minute flight. In July 1969, another Heuer stopwatch would time the descent of The Eagle to the surface of the moon. Both of these stopwatches are on display in the Smithsonian Museum [Smithsonian, Friendship 7; Smithsonian, Apollo 11].

That decade closed on introduction of “the world’s first automatic chronographs in 1969, with the Autavia, Heuer Carrera and Monaco models. … Heuer would be the first to offer automatic chronographs to worldwide markets, with the Calibre 11 (Chronomatic) movement.” Application of pioneering electronics into its chronographs, however, were met by “huge challenges” in 1975: This included both “difficult exchange rates between the Swiss Franc and the U.S. Dollar, and from newly-developed quartz watches from Japan.”

Heuer responded in 1979 with the introduction of “rugged dive watches that would become its future.

Beginning with a handful of models, with automatic or quartz movements. Dials were orange, luminous, olive and pewter, or the traditional black, with sizes ranging from 28 to 42 millimeters.

In 2016, Hodinkee referred to this as “one watch that played a critical role in Heuer’s history that remains almost entirely overlooked [Westphalen].

Its stunning success was unexpected and came at the best possible time for the company. In Jack Heuer’s own words: ‘We could not imagine that this model would be the very watch that would help the company recover.’ Surprisingly, this glorious hero was not a chronograph – hell, most of the time it’s powered by a quartz movement. So let’s settle this injustice and look at a relatively obscure diving watch, despite it being a bestseller from 1979 to this day. This is the Heuer Diver Professional.

Whether this left more to be done or opened new doors to opportunity is a question for other places. What matters to this focus is that in 1985, the “Techniques d’Avant-Garde” group acquired a majority stake in Heuer and with that came the current corporate moniker: TAG Heuer. In a summary by the late Chuck Maddox, “The major shareholder of TAG was Saudi Arabian until 1996 when the company was floated on the stock-exchange. In mid-September 1999, the french (sic) luxury products manufacturer LVMH bought TAG for almost 1,2 billion Swiss Francs.”

In 1987 — the year that Timothy Dalton was introduced as the latest James Bond with a TAG Heuer on his wrist in The Living Daylights — the watchmaker website would have it noted that TAG Heuer had “moved upmarket, from its traditional dive watches to watches that would incorporate the most sophisticated designs.

Sales materials emphasized that the new … watches could be worn with a diving suit or a dinner jacket.

En Route to 007

Director John Glen has argued that the two years between the swan song of Roger Moore as James Bond in A View to a Kill and the selection of his successor with the onset of pre-production on The Living Daylights was hardly rote [Glen].

Despite what you may have read elsewhere, we really didn’t have a clue who to cast as James Bond when Roger hung up his gun holster. … in summer of 1986 [I] started testing … eager hopefuls.

By that point, James Bond had not worn a mechanical or Swiss-made wristwatch in twelve years, in The Man with the Golden Gun. That Rolex was a carryover from Live and Let Die, and arguably anomalous in hindsight. From 1973 through 1985, the character had worn eleven different wristwatch models in EON Productions films, all but one of which were run by quartz oscillators. Perhaps most importantly, nine bore the name of Japanese watchmaker Seiko — which was acknowledged in credits for product placement.

In 1986, overall wristwatch production worldwide had just seen its fourth pivot in growth acceleration during the Bond era, passing the half-billion unit mark, over half of which were quartz [Doensen]. Swiss manufacturing made up around 15% of that, which was consequential when viewed in terms of its output of effectively zero when Seiko entered the fray with The Spy Who Loved Me.

Also note that the number of mechanicals watches coming out of Switzerland was at the time of The Living Daylights well-under a fifth of what it had been in 1977, and from 1980 to 1985 volume had been dropping off at a rate faster than worldwide production from all sources.

Double-0 Watch Status

TAG Heuer first became a James Bond watch through the premier of The Living Daylights on June 29, 1987.

Insights

In addition to Timothy Dalton as Agent 007, two other characters wore Night Dive wristwatches in The Living Daylights: The “imposter” villain who appeared in the pre-title sequence on Gibraltar, and actor John Terry as Felix Leiter.

As noted on my James Bond Watches Blog in 2010, “Paul Gavin, David Chalmers, and I took a close look at the three other dominant watches in The Living Daylights ….

Portrayed by actor John Rhys-Davies, General Leonid Pushkin wore not just a wristwatch, but the only gadget-watch in The Living Daylights ….

Gavin readily identified it as a Heuer or TAG Heuer Airline GMT, ‘most likely’ a 985.313 reference. It was available through the 1986 TAG Heuer catalogue.

We then turned our attention to the next two most evident watches worn by major characters in The Living Daylights: Necros and Koskov …. Worn on his right wrist, Necros’ wristwatch has a thick black case, black jubilee-style bracelet, black dial, two white hands, and a third, colored hand. At one point two crown-like protrusions are obvious — at the 2 o’clock and 3 o’clock positions. Circumference markings for a diver’s bezel can also be seen.

Gavin called this as a Heuer Regatta automatic, reference 134.601, from a 1984 Heuer catalogue. David Chalmers then summarized his impression of our team effort up to that point in a February 2010 eMail. ‘I think we can be 100% certain there is a Heuer / TAG Heuer Airline used in the movie, 90% certain that there is a Heuer / TAG Heuer 980.031, and probably 75% certain that there is a Heuer Regatta’ ….

[The] wristwatch worn by General Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé), did not immediately stand out as a Heuer. So the inquiry on this one was more to see if it ‘could’ be a Heuer — thus keeping the door open to a possible single-watch domination among major cast members in The Living Daylights.

A grey-colored “Titanium and Carbon Fibre” sports watch reference 823.213 is consistent with the Koskov-watch screen-captures that I provided to our study team. Gavin found this in the same 1984 Heuer catalog as the Necros Regatta.

At various points during the first two quarters of 2024, I revisited best information for additional character appearances in The Living Daylights. After having done so, I have added as “highly likely” that a reference 980.013 was worn by Saunders (Thomas Wheatley), head of Section V, Vienna.

— Dell Deaton
Updated: June 18, 2024
January 14, 2024

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