Original vintage 1970s print advertisement for the Heuer Carrera dress watch and Heuer Autavia chronograph.
Dimensions: Roughly 8.25 inches wide by 11 inches high.
The Carrera name goes back to the Carrera Panamericana, a legendary (and frequently deadly) car race through Mexico. Per Hodinkee, the Heuer connection can be traced back to March 1962, with Jack Heuer attending the 12 Hours of Sebring race in Florida. Jack had just recently taken the reins of the company after buying out his uncle, who wanted to leave the business. Jack had been invited to Sebring by the Sports Car Club of America in appreciation of Heuer lending stopwatches and timing devices to serve as the timekeepers of the race.
Jack had an affinity for Ferraris and ended up stationing himself in the Ferrari pit. The two hotshot Ferrari drivers were the young Rodriguez brothers of Mexico. In fact, Ricardo, only 20 years old, was on the cover of that week's issue of Sports Illustrated in anticipation of the race.
Jack struck up a conversation with the brothers' parents and they expressed their gratitude that their boys were not old enough to have raced in the Carrera Panamericana, a race across Mexico which had ended in 1954. Over the five years of that race, 27 racers and spectators died, making it one of the deadliest sporting events of modern times.
Jack was struck by the name Carrera (meaning "race" or "career" in Spanish and easy to pronounce for most of the world) and decided to register it for Heuer later that year. Now he just needed a watch to go with the name.
Clearly, Heuer has a deep history rooted in motorsports racing, despite facing difficulty selling wristwatch chronographs in the early 1970’s. In fact, Heuer’s stopwatches, the leader in track timing at the time, vastly outsold its wristwatches used for motorsports timing at the time.
From this difficult time came a unique partnership – Heuer was struggling to sell watches, Viceroy its cigarettes. Heuer and Viceroy approached the famous Parnelli Jones racing team with a proposal to promote both the sportsman’s cigarette and Autavia chronograph, respectively. From this proposal arose a new version of the famed Heuer Autavia as part of a cross-branding cigarette/chronograph promotion.
Heuer produced this special version of the 1163, the Calibre 11 1163V, for the deal - and Viceroy offered the watch for $88 when combined with a single box top from a Viceroy Cigarette carton. The promotion was a great branding (and financial) success for Heuer, and laid the foundation for a subsequent successful rise.
The name Autavia, first used on Heuer dashboard racing timers in the 1930s, came from a combo of two words - Automotive & Aviation. The 1163 was launched in 1969 and has the 1163 reference number engraved between the lugs. Most of the 1163 range was on sale from 1969-1972 - while the 1163 was only on sale for a few years, the case design served as the template for Autavias that followed.