Dear Heuer Lovers,

I think the find of the white dialed orange boy is a breakthrough in heuer archaeology.
If we follow the automatic autavia history, black dial always means mh, bright dial mean tachymetre - why should it be diffrent with the orange boy?

Jeff your theory is very interesting but still something doesn't seem right here.
The viceroy deal was huge for heuer - but did heuer really plan on something like this to happen?
I think the viceroy deal actually "disturbed" the planned heuer marketing strategy.
Why would heuer launch two autavia models in the same year 1972 (1163 vs 11630) - which were radically different from each other (plastic crystal, slim case vs. mineral glass, fat case)?
Why would heuer do the effort of creating the orange boy, just available for a few months when the 11630 was already in the pipeline?

My ORANGE BOY / VICEROY theory is:

1.) The production of the white blue and the black white 1163 was already running out.
Maybe heuer still had some outstanding orders...

2.) the 11630 model was already in development, but not ready yet -
Don't forget: mineral glass was a big, hot thing by then!

3.) all the sudden the viceroy promotion deal came in.
The viceroy brand colours are white and red. The standard ( derek bell) 1163 MH must have seemed as the perfect vehicle for the viceroy promotion!

4.) what to do now? Can you sell the same watch for 88$ in a promotion when you are selling the same watch for 200$ in your inline collection without offending your customers? I guess no!
They needed to look different! Heuer needed a new watch - the orange boy!

5.) conclusion:

- heuer took the standard 1163 MH and just switched the bezel to fullfill the viceroy deal

- then they quickly launched the orange boy to make the inline collection look different from the viceroy promotion watches: a dial is an easy thing to change on a watch. They took orange dials from the 11630 prototype watches and adapted the colour of the hands.

With a minimum of efforts heuer was able to to continue to produce the standard 1163 models without interfering with the viceroy; simultaniously they could finalize the development of the 11630 mineral glass autavias.
In fact the dial similarities of the orange boy and the 11630 minerals created a softer transission from one to another. This would also explain why you would still find some 11630 watches with the white dial.

Bottom line is:

The orange boy is a transitional model, created in view of the viceroy promotion!

Why else would you create a watch that is just produced for a few months, unless you promote it as limited edition?

Looking forward to hear your thoughts!

Happy holidays and a fantastic 2012 everybody!

Tino

pls see below my orange boy i sold recently :-(