Some more info and how I found it...
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Chuck,
Have you got anymore info I am new to this game and a keen learner so what does a French Heuer mean in practice... made in a differnent factory...not as good. Well, I dunno... I don't really have any empirical or canonical data to say or even claim they are inferior, but I do believe that they were considered "Economy" models at the time of their production and they are certainly less sophisticated then their Micro-Rotor, Valjoux 7750 and Lemania 5100 stable-mates of the same era.
Certainly their status of being French made would proclude them from being assembled in the same Swiss factory that other Heuer's of the era, but I don't have any details specifically spelling out where in France these were manufactured or the reasons/thinking/marketing/etc. for Heuer doing this...
If you could elaborate it would be great. Well, here is a brief walk down the path of learning...
If you visit the "Mother Ship" of OTD, you'll notice on the left hand side a link that states: Chronograph Master Reference Table:
Now if you look down about a screen and a half you'll see a bunch of Heuer model's listed... Click on the link "French_Made_Chronographs" and you'll get the following table: |
French_Made_Chronographs
By looking at this table, we can see that ther eis a catalog date of 1979 on these models... So our next stop is the Catalogs section of OnTheDash... If we click on the Catalogs link from the main page of OTD, we'll see listings for catalogs going back to 1938. We're looking for 1979, so we scroll down... and see 1979 Chronograph Catalog (Fr)... Click on it and go to page 6... Unfortunately, OTD isn't cooperating with my iFrame HTML this morning, so you'll have to look at it via a separate window. You can click on the image to get a bigger version of it. From here we can use Babelfish, and type in specific passages to translate the original French to English or many other languages.
Now, unless I've missed something, that is about the extent of information on the French Made Chronographs on OTD... However, there is a chap named Chuck Maddox, who maintains his own supository of watch related information that might shed additional light on the topic... So let's scroll down to the Heuer/TAG-Heuer Section and we'll see a pair of 1979 catalogs... the first one "(Most of a) 1979 Heuer Watch Catalog" has a page of interest... |
When the index below come's up click on the link "LCD Chronographs/Manual Winding" within the window.
as well as the next page...
The Second 1979 Heuer catalog also has a page of interest (page 6 to be exact): |
Page 06-07:
I took the liberty of going through the 1977 and c.1980 catalog and did not find any additional information of note on the French Chronographs.
Speak to you soon. Anyway, now you know what I know, with the exception of the knowledge that the French Made Chronographs were sometimes used in Marketing promotions, like the Viceroy Autavia's, and you'll sometimes find them festooned with Champion Spark Plug logo's and other similar items. Hence my statement of them being "Economy" or entry level models.
Hopefully this long post will give you a better idea of the resources that are available, and how to do research on your own. There is lot's to learn, lots out there, and the journey is the reward. There is no better way to learn than to explore on your own.
I hope this is helpful...
-- Chuck
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