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onzenuub

TAG Heuer Carrera Automatic Chronograph Day-Date Review

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onzenuub

Tag Heuer Carrera Automatic Chronograph Day Date

 

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Some history of Tag Heuer and the Carrera

 

Heuer:

Founder: Edouard Heuer

Pronounced: "Tag Hoy-Yer"

 

Heuer Watch Company was founded in 1860 by Edouard Heuer. He opened a watchmaking workshop in St-Imier, a village in the Swiss Jura region. Heuer watches soon became recognized for a high level of accuracy and workmanship. Perfect for the timing of sporting events Heuer soon found its niche.

 

TAG Heuer has a long tradition of technological innovation in precision timepieces, including stopwatches and water-resistant watches. Reflecting this heritage, the TAG Heuer brand has long been closely associated with the world of competitive sports, providing official timing services for the Olympic Games, FIS Ski World Cup, FIA Formula 1 World Championship and other major international sporting events - automobile racing, ski competitions - since the early 1900's.

 

In addition, TAG Heuer continues winning an active following among sports enthusiasts around the world. Throughout its history, TAG Heuer has steadily built its reputation understanding design and innovation, as well as, a tradition, establishing itself as a leading producer of prestigious sports watches and chronographs

 

Timeline:

1860 - Edouard Heuer founds a watchmaking company in St-Imier, Switzerland

1882 - Heuer patents his first chronograph.

1887 - Heuer patents an "oscillating pinion" still used by major watchmakers for mechanical chronographs.

1911 - Heuer introduces the first automobile dash-board chronograph.

1916 - Heuer invents a stopwatch that is accurate to within 1/100th of a second called the micrograph.

1920's - Heuer watches are timekeepers at the Antwerp, Paris and Amsterdam Olympics.

1933 - Heuer launches the "Autavia" the first dashboard stopwatch for race-cars.

1950 - Heuer introduces the "Mareograph - Seafarer" a wristwatch with chronograph functions and tide indicator. (COOL WATCH!)

1963 - Heuer launches the "Carrera" chronograph. This watch was named for the 1950's "Carrera Pan-america Mexico" road-race.

1965 - Heuer patents the MICROTIMER, the first miniature electronic timekeeping device which was accurate to within 1/1000th of a second.

1969 - Heuer introduces the "Chronomatic", the first automatic chronograch with a microrotor. They also introduce the widely popular "Monaco" worn by movie-star Steve McQueen.

1971 to 1979 - Heuer is named the official timekeeper for formula one racing.

1975 - Heuer launches the "Chronosplit", the worlds first quartz wrist chronograph.

1985 - Heuer joins "TAG" group and the famous watch name and logo are changed from HEUER to TAG-HEUER. Since then the company has craftily built one of the most recognized watch names in the world. Tag-Heuer becomes a very popular and fashionable status symbol.

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In 1950 Mexico was about to compete its section of the great Pan-American highway. To celebrate that event, it was decided to create a motor race on the 3,500 km distance of the highway from the border of Guatemala and the United States. From 1950 through 1954, "Le Carrera Panamericana Rally Mexico" was held five times. And five times the worlds greatest drivers traversed the vast expanse over terrain that varied from deserts, prairies, mountains and tropical jungles. A legend was born.

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Introduced in 1963, Carrera was the first Heuer line of watches with it's own brand name. Although the Carrera was a evolution in terms of design for Heuer, its look was completely distinctive when compared to the commonly seen and sold chronographs of the 1940's and 1950's. Jack Heuer (pictured at left), the CEO of the company, wanted a watch with an excellent readability. So he printed the 1/5 sec scale on the "rehaut" (the inner bezel) of the watch. Tachymeter or pulsometer scales were not placed in the centre of the dial (a typical design feature of 1940's and 1950's chronographs), but formed an outer ring around the five minutes markers. The dial immediately looked bigger and cleaner.

It's fair to say that Heuer was already moving in this direction prior to the first formal naming of a Carrera model. The line was in continuous production until the late 1970's/early 1980's in one form, model, style or another. Design changed with the taste of the times from classical-elegant, round case, small lugs (until mid 1960's) to, well 1970's style - large and fancy cushion cases. The last vintage Carreras in the 1980's showed more modern designs like the contemporary Lemania, Omega or Porsche Design watches.

 

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The official full name of this watch is TAG Heuer Carrera Automatic Chronograph Day-Date, it is added to the TAG Heuer Carrera family in 2008.

 

The TAG Heuer Carrera Chronograph Day-Date has a TAG Heuer Calibre 16 automatic chronograph movement. This TAG Heuer watch comes with a 43 mm polished steel case with a tachymeter scale on its polished steel bezel and silver dial, with scratch resistant sapphire crystal with double AR.

 

Additional versions include brown aluminum bezel / brown dial, black aluminium bezel / black dial, bracelet made with 5 row alternate fine brushed and polished steel, black or brown alligator strap or black rubber strap. This are the three versions:

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The Rep

 

The front

The watch I bought has the white dial and is from Precious Times. After unpacking it it looked great. Compared to the gen, the gen has a more white dial, the dial of the rep looks some more creme. Another flaw is the Tag Heuer badge above the day/date display….there should be a small arrow on the end of the G, the replica goes into a point whereas the genuine has a defined arrow head. Pic of the gen is the left one.

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The minute marker numerals are not all perfectly aligned.If you take a closer look at the rep pictures, you'll see that the 6 and 0 at 60 are misaligned; so are the 1 and 0 at 10, 1 and 5 at 15 and the 2 and 0 at 20. The 60 and 15 are the most noticeable though. Further, the numbers imprinted on the chrono subdials are rougher than the corresponding on the gen watch.

On the chrono seconds hand (large seconds hand on main handpost) the red tip is too short. The gen has a 1 mm longer area of red on the tip fo the hands. The circels around the chronos appear some more blue instead of grey.

The datefont is very close, the differences of the datefont are so minimal it’s not even worth mentioning.

4404746546_49a2ecc230_m.jpg4403982261_d0de5fa872_m.jpgThe color of the window around the day/date is a little different as the gen color. The gen is more grey.

 

The Back

The gen has silver screws, whereas the replica comes with blue ones.

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The rotor bearing mount looks to be very accurate. The Day/Date comes with the upgraded rotor.

Another tell are the geneva stripes, the gen has five, the rep four;

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Side

The black ring of the crown is included, and as you can see the top chrono pusher also has the red ring around it. The red paint on the chrono button is very gen like. Again the rep is on the left and the gen is on the right.

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The movement

The movement is an Asian 7750, 22,800 bph which is a great movement once serviced. Francisco serviced this movement.

 

Other

The lume is very poor. The AR is also slightly too blue, only because of the white dial it is not a big deal.

 

In comparison to the Breitling I also like this TAG Carrera looks even better as the Breitling Montbrillant Datora I have. With the heavy feel the watch feels very gen like.

 

The wristshot.

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dingle

well done onze!. :rofl:

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onzenuub
well done onze!. :rofl:

Thank you Dingleberry

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dingle
well done onze!. :rofl:

Sjutup noob

 

Sjutup old fart

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KBH
well done onze!. :rofl:

Sjutup noob

 

Sjutup old fart

 

Damn. I'm afraid to say anything! :rofl:

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onzenuub
well done onze!. :rofl:

Sjutup noob

 

Sjutup old fart

 

Damn. I'm afraid to say anything! :rofl:

 

 

He just changes my words.

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wjalink

Thanks for this extensive review! You bought the wacht from 'Precious Times'? I tried to google that website, but can't find it. Can you post me the link to the website?

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wjalink

Thanks for helping me out. I was taking a look at www.replicaewatches.com, but I found that website very strange... they offer special discounts if you don't pay via credit card but vai Western Union. Nice, however the discount percentage is not clear. On some parts of the site they say you get 20% discount, on the page of the watch it says 30% discount and when you take a look at the payment options it says both 6% and 10% on the same page!?!

 

This is what I found: http://www.replicaewatches.com/Tag-Heuer-C...A10.FC6235.html

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greg_r

Avoid like the plague. They're scammers. The reason why they want you to pay via WU is that you then have NO protection should they decide to rip you off...

 

Stick to the Trusted Dealers - you'll save yourself a lot of dough - and a lot of hassle :wacko:

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wjalink

Okay, I will definitely avoid them!

 

I never thought it would be so much fun to search for a good quality fake watch that almost looks like the original. If I want to have pricing information from Precious Times, I just have to fill in the inquiry form with the details of the watches I am interested in?

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onzenuub
Okay, I will definitely avoid them!

 

I never thought it would be so much fun to search for a good quality fake watch that almost looks like the original. If I want to have pricing information from Precious Times, I just have to fill in the inquiry form with the details of the watches I am interested in?

 

Yes.

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GC

Great review Onzenuub!!!

 

Your comparisons/diffrences between gen & rep are very very slight. You've got a keeper there mate!

 

Enjoy it!

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ste_0

Is there any way to swap out those rotor screws?

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greg_r
Is there any way to swap out those rotor screws?

 

 

Sure, if you're capable of working on movements or know a rep-friendly watchmaker...

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sconehead

Nicely written review Onze...:rofl:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...am I allowed to threadcrap it though? :Whistle:

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vonGluberschmidt

reviving an old thread....

I just received my watch from Lawrence.

 

the price that was listed on his site was $100 less than I ended up paying, but he claimed this was due to increased quality movement and so on.

 

well, based on what I see here, and with what Francisco had to do to mod his rep to be more like the gen.....

 

my watch is pretty much bang on.

 

the rotor is the "type 1" in Francisco's mod thread, the hardware is blue, though this picture doesn't show it, it's clearly blue in person:

 

calibre162.jpg

 

 

the date font and centering appears to be correct.

 

the only thing I see is that my second hand isn't 100% dead center. it's slightly left of top dead center.

this can be seen here:

 

calibre161.jpg

 

chrono works well.

the sweep of the second hand is smooth.

 

super happy with my rep.

I ordered a second watch, will be anxious to see the differences between the two.

 

regards,

d vonG

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Aren

Great review Onze. :)

 

I don't see Precious Time on the Trusted Dealer list.

I do see them alot in an email box I have.

I take it that Precious Time is no longer on the trusted dealer list?

 

Still a great review and precise comparison of the gen/rep.

 

Nice work Onze.

Thanks for sharing.

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chum_2000_uk

Yep, superb review. This review was one of the main reasons I went for my Tag Carrera, and I'm so glad I did - I love it! I've just sent it off to Aris to have it serviced, dial cleaned and have the stopwatch hand put to dead on 60 as it was one or two increments off. Can't wait to get it back. Still, should have a seamaster chrono to tide me over in the next day or two :unsure:

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d1isthe1
well done onze!. :unsure:

He did not write this .. Did u onzenuub ?

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onzenuub
well done onze!. :)

He did not write this .. Did u onzenuub ?

I did, and why wouldn't I have written this?????

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d1isthe1
well done onze!. :D

He did not write this .. Did u onzenuub ?

I did, and why wouldn't I have written this?????

Just pullin ur leg mate ;) its a great review...

Edited by d1isthe1

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onzenuub

Added a pic of the difference geneva stripes gen and rep.

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LMPAZ

Now that you have had the watch for a while, how is it holding up? Any new problems?

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onzenuub

Nope still doing great

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