WORLDTEMPUS - 2 July 2012
Robin Swithinbank
Jack Heuer is in impressively good shape, and not just for a man who turns 80 this year. He had knee replacement surgery five weeks ago after a serious skiing accident (he is still a passionate skier – and competed as a student), but there's no sign of a crutch, a walking stick or even a winsome PR girl on his arm to offer support.
We're at a hotel a few hundred yards inland from England's East Sussex coast on the eve of this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed – the annual celebration of motorsport that took place over the weekend – and Mr. Heuer, or “Jack” as everyone seems to be calling him, is the guest of honour at a press dinner.
I've not met him before, and I'm encouraged to sit next to him over a plate of barbecued steak, chicken and lobster. He is chatty, charming and hungry – dinner is a help-yourself affair and he is the first from our table to go for seconds.
In between visits to the grill, he regales his eager audience with tales of his life in the watch industry. He talks lucidly of being sent to New York as a twenty-something in the late 1950s with a check book and a brief to set up a subsidiary in the U.S., of being asked to give up his shares in the company during the dark days of the “quartz crisis,” and of how in today's world you'd never be able to do some of things Heuer the brand did back in the day.
“Now, if you were putting, say, St. Moritz on the dial of a watch, someone would ring you up and say, “I own that name, give me some money',” he says. “But back then, we could put Silverstone or Montreal on a watch and nobody thought about it. We didn't have the word ‘marketing' in Switzerland in those days.”
Candid Carrera
He's come to Goodwood, where TAG Heuer is the Festival of Speed's official timekeeper, for the second year running as part of an exhaustive world tour to celebrate his eightieth birthday. Despite his largely ambassadorial role as the brand's honorary chairman, Heuer was involved in the development of the limited edition Carrera Calibre 17 launched to celebrate the start of his ninth decade and lent his signature to the case back. It's a fine looking watch. “Thank you,” he says when offered the compliment. “It was nice to be asked to help with the design and I think it turned out nice.”
Heuer penned the original Carrera design in 1963 (brace yourself for a big anniversary next year). Did he ever imagine it would still be with us 50 years on? “No, of course not,” he says, quite reasonably. “How could I?” The Carrera has become TAG Heuer's most successful model and you can see from the way he talks about it that it's particularly close to his heart. That and the fact he's wearing the fortieth anniversary model – number one of 1,964, as it happens.
As a rule, Heuer is candid in his appraisal of models launched during his tenure as brand boss. He has little time for the Silverstone for example, because it wasn't well received. It never had a Steve McQueen moment, unlike the original square-cased Monaco, which got mixed press until the iconic actor wore it in the 1971 film “Le Mans.” I get the impression his feelings about the Monaco would be as laconic but for its subsequent popularity – remember the good times, move on from the bad.
Time to move on
I ask him if he'd like to see the Autavia, a favorite of mine, make a return. “I asked them about it,” he admits, referring to the top brass at TAG Heuer headquarters. “But they said maybe it would be too many watches in the collection – and maybe they are right, so…” A shrug of the shoulders, a final slice of cheese, and it's time to retire for the evening.
He rises and waves cheerily to the throng, before turning in for the night. He has to be up early the following morning to open a photographic exhibition at the festival dedicated to the many achievements in Formula 1 of TAG Heuer ambassador Alain Prost.
All evening, he's been genial company. In the past, he has said publicly how painful his separation from the company was in the early 1980s, but from the outside it appears those wounds are all but healed, even though it's likely he will be the last of the Heuers to have an active role in the brand. He's glad to be putting his name to watches again; glad to be dining al fresco on a sunny English summer's evening; glad to be involved.
