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Vintage Heuer Discussion Forum
The place for discussing 1930-1985 Heuer wristwatches, chronographs and dash-mounted timepieces. Online since May 2003. | |||||||
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The Autavia was introduced, with dauphine hands, in 1962. These earliest Autavias, however, had large registers, perhaps more reminiscent of chronographs from the 40s than the 60s, emphasized by the hands. The script of the numbers on the registers also looks earlier than the script we see adopted on pretty much every Swiss chronograph in the mid- to late-60s, irrespective of manufacturer.
By the time the Carrera comes along in 1964, the Autavia has modernised a bit and has registers more in proportion with those on the newly-launched Carrera. The dauphine hands were still in place.
Not long again after that and the Autavias were using plain steel hands, again similar to the contemporary Carrera's.
I'm not knocking these Autavias at all by using words like "reminiscent of the 40s" and "modernised" - quite the contrary, I think they are great-looking watches, particularly those with the large registers. I find the rapid design changes of these pretty interesting too.
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