Interesting Nivada John. It has its Heuer counterparts too:

I quite like the date at 12; I certainly prefer it to the Dato 45 with the window at 9:

Once they realised the resting second hand somewhat obscures the date at 12, it then only became a technical issue to move the date to the relatively clear 6 o'clock position. It wasn't resolved overnight though, so there must be more to it than it can appear to the layman.

That said, I do prefer the Nivada Taravana once they started using Vj 773xs and the date was clearly in the "right" place then, but for me it's more about liking the case shape a lot more for the later watches: