It probably needs an Autavia expert to come in on the 1163 specifically, but I think it's fair to say the general timeline around these movements is still a work in progress and there are only a few unequivocal dates in there.

Let's start with the beginning, it's as good a place as any!

1969: The Chronomatic (aka Calibre 11) movement is announced in March and into production by the summer of that year. You can read Jeff's excellent account of the project and its launch here: http://www.chronocentric.com/forums/heuer/index.cgi?noframes;read=20947

- Early movements encounter a number of problems, resulting in the introduction of an improved version, the Calibre 11 I ( http://www.chronocentric.com/forums/heuer/index.cgi?noframes;read=26165 ). This continues to use the same rhodium-plated base plate and bridges as the original Cal 11 movement.

- The Cal 11 I is improved further to create the Calibre 12.

- Early Calibre 12s appear to use Cal 11/11 I baseplates and bridges, where the main bridge has had the 11 ground out and 12 stamped in the resulting "pit".

- Regular series production of the Calibre 12 uses gold-plated bridges and baseplate.

1972: Heuer undertakes a general revision of the hour recorders on its dials, showing every numeral from 1 to 12 instead of just 3-6-9-12 as previously. This is dateable from the catalogues in which it appears, which conveniently also have a print date on them. Some people attribute this change to the introduction of the Cal 12, but I'm not convinced on that - it applied equally to automatic and manual watches and the change to how the hour recorder needle moved had already happened with the 11 I, so there wasn't a technical change they would have wanted to draw attention to with this renumbering.

You'll no doubt notice that there are only two firm dates in that list. Everything that happened in between was at some point between 1969 and 1972. Further investigation and discussion with ex-Heuer employees may help pin them down, and Jeff may even be some way along that process, but in terms of readily publically available information, that's what we have.

With a user name like patekXX, you'll be aware that it is very common for a sale date for a Patek to be a year or two after the date of manufacture (ah, if only we had records as thorough as that in the Heuer world...). The same is likely to have been true for Heuer, so even when we have information dating the sale (as we do for one of the OTD Sifferts), it's more indicative of date of manufacture (i.e. it can't have been sold before it was manufactured! Reserved perhaps, sold no (let's not quibble over semantics if someone paid in full when they ordered!)) than definitive. As for something as easily changed as hands, the degree of certainty has to be less.

My guess would be that, if a watch has the 1.2.3...12 numbered hour recorder, the likelihood of the original movement being a gold Cal 12 is very high; rhodium Cal 12 low and Cal 11 very low. All the while knowing that precise dating of the interim events above could throw all of those out a bit - except the gold Cal 12 bit, we know for sure once these were introduced, they stuck with them.

So instead of giving you a straight answer, I've set out a few options and possibilities - we are dealing more with shades of grey than black and white for this period of Heuer history, but one of the Autavia experts may weigh in with the benefit of their experience of this particular model!

Mark