Heuer has now become a household name - albeit under different ownership than founded it, namely TAG Heuer, which took over in the mid-1980s.  The pewter-cased 1983 TAG Heuer 3000 Professional Ref. 932.206 diver here, on its original Heuer-signed bracelet is a great example of a design TAG didn’t mess with after it assumed control of the company.
 
Make no mistake - this is the watch, made from 1979 - 1984, that saved Heuer from bankruptcy during the 1980s.  Per Hodinkee in "Why The Heuer Diver Professional Deserves A Lot More Credit Than It Gets," "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 was to 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 very day.  This is the Heuer Diver Professional."
 
Given the parlous state of the Swiss watchmaking industry in the early 1980s, it likely made sense to TAG Heuer to eek out as many model variants as possible using as few unique parts as possible – however while the 1000 and 2000 series were popular, lasting several decades, the 3000 was only on sale for just over five. 
 
By the early 1980s, Heuer was doing well with the 1000 Series and 2000 Series dive watches and chronographs, and wanted to capitalize on this success by adding a “premium” collection of watches and chronographs.  The 3000 Series would be this premium collection, described in a 1984 catalog as offering “functional elegance for high performance instruments.”   The 3000 design is a development of the successful 2000-series launched in 1982, with the 3000 featuring squared curves to create a more technical looking watch.
 
Birthed under the Heuer brand, the 3000 series carried over when TAG purchased the company and left the 3000 largely unchanged, apart from the obvious TAG Heuer logo.  Complementing the angular case was a large 12-sided bezel that sat inside the width of the watch.  While not as wide as the case itself, the bezel is very thick, and features small ball-shaped grips at each corner to make it easier to turn.
 
This quintessential no-nonsense Heuer tool watch was produced between circa 1979-84, but in some important way it continued to be made throughout the 1990s (more on this below).  For a brief history of these amazing Heuer divers, as noted in a fascinating Hodinkee article, “A Personal Note: Marking Time With A Humble Heuer” - “In 1980, Heuer decided it was time to build a proper dive watch...in the late 1970s, as Jack Heuer tells it in his autobiography, “The Times Of My Life (2013),” Heuer was at a sporting goods trade show in Europe and was approached by a diving equipment company having trouble finding quality dive watches.
 
Before that fateful show, Heuer was not doing well as a company and its situation had begun deteriorating as early as late 1974 (along with most of the Swiss watchmaking industry, badly hit by the quartz crisis caused by Seiko).  Quartz watches were more technically advanced than mechanical watches, and at a lower price point too, making them fierce competitors for the traditional Swiss companies.
 
It is in this grim context Jack Heuer saw an opportunity at that 1979 sporting goods trade show.  Heuer got the idea to address a recurrent complaint voiced regarding the difficulty in finding reliable private label watches for underwater sports – Heuer’s expertise at this time was racing chronographs, but it took the challenge regardless, and teamed up with French supplier G. Monnin.
 
Per Heuer, “To our great surprise our new diving watches were very well received by the market."  So much so, in fact, that the following year Heuer began offering the Diver Professional in four different sizes and a multitude of dial configurations.
 
After a year of outsourcing to Monnin, Heuer took over the manufacturing of the Ref. 844, re-named the 980.XXX, and sold in a myriad of versions, with different case sizes in gold or steel (even two-tone), a PVD version (both black and camo green), and orange, black, and full-lume dials, all with bracelet or rubber strap.  Most came in four different sizes (28mm, 32mm, 38mm, and 42mm, with different finishes – and yes, even a full lume dial variant.
 
But did Heuer’s overall efforts help the company?
 
As Hodinkee tells it, the Heuer diver “…immediately sold very well for Heuer, and continued to do so even after Heuer became TAG Heuer in 1985.  After the merger, the line was kept as is, and quickly expanded… [and] eventually became the Aquaracer in 2004.  Looking at the history, the real impact of the Heuer Professional is striking: In some form or another, these dive watches have been a best-seller for (TAG) Heuer since 1979!"

This Heuer comes on its original stainless-steel TAG Heuer-signed bracelet, and with nylon strap, spring bar tool, and rugged travel case.