...to the extent where that detail becomes more important than the watch as a whole. Not something the Heuer collecting world suffers from as much, though I wonder if we open the door to it with ever more detailed model tables.

In part, I think the trend of giving a specific model a catchy name (DRSD), attributing it to a personality (McQueen Monaco) or anthropomorphising it (Bart Simpson crown) is to blame. Dry, factual descriptions are much less likely to spread virally or become memetic and that's why I prefer them. Often they are much less ambiguous too (just exactly what IS a Derek Bell Autavia?).

I've written about my preference for the white on black date wheels on the 1158 CHN. I could have attributed that to one of the F1 drivers who wore it in that configuration, but I'm happier spelling it out each time. And that detail, whilst important to me, is still only a small part of the picture of the watch as a whole.

You definitely have a point with volumes. There's no point in slicing the Heuer pie ever thinner when it's such a small pie to start with. When a model doesn't make it into the thousands, there's not much need to differentiate between them. A watch with tens of thousands of examples annually? Different story perhaps.

And let's be thankful Heuer never had a rehaut that had "HeuerHeuerHeuer" on it repeatedly... ;)