Consistent with the elegant style of the watch, the cyclops for the date display is set inside the crystal, rather on the top surface, as typically seen on a dive watch.Ĭutting across the dial on the three-hand watch model are four raised trapezium sections, at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock, while on the chronograph, we have three sub-dials at 12, 6 and 9 o’clock. This terraced approach gives the dials of the Executive watches and chronographs considerable depth, a sense emphasized further on the chronograph by the deep-set date. The dial on the Executive is quite detailed, with three distinct elements: the outer edge of the is marked for minutes / seconds, with hash marks for 1/5 second intervals of the chronograph the banked second element hosts the luminous hour plots and the center section of the dial has a matte champagne or black finish. In combining features of a dive watch and a three-register chronograph, the Executive was positioned as offering the best of both worlds.
#Tag heuer series
To put that price into context, the customer could have purchased five 1000 Series quartz dive watches for this amount, or two Lemania 5100-powered automatic chronographs. The pricing of watches and chronographs in the Executive collection reflected their premium positioning, going back to September 1985, the Executive stainless-steel chronograph was priced at DM 2,280 (US $820) in Germany.
The S/el would later become the “Link” collection, which remains in the TAG Heuer catalog to this day. Still, it was the Executive range that marked the first decisive move in this direction, with the collection being introduced under the “Heuer” name and then transitioning to the “TAG Heuer” branding, after completion of the acquisition in January 1986. Two years later, in 1987, TAG Heuer would be even more explicit about the premium positioning of its watches, when it created the S/el (Sports / Elegance) collection. While through the development of these collections Heuer was able to move from the strictly utilitarian dive watch to watches and chronographs that had a more elegant style, in 1985 Heuer would introduce a new collection that was clearly seeking to move up-market, as evidenced by its name: the “Executive.” If the 2000 Series and 3000 Series added some style to watches that had their origins as “tool watches”, the Executive collection seems to have gone in the other direction, having its origins as an elegant watch designed for the fashion-conscious enthusiasts, while maintaining the rotating bezel and 200-meter depth rating that were the hallmarks of Heuer’s previous collections of dive watches.
Heuer introduced its first range of dive watches in 1978, and by 1985 the collections included the 1000 Series, the 2000 Series and the 3000 Series. With the Link as the Executive’s successor, we see that combining a reliable dive watch with an elegant, forward-looking design was an approach that would prove successful for TAG Heuer into the 21st century. Of course, the Executive collection also stood at the transition from Heuer to TAG Heuer, as one of the last collections designed before the change in ownership of the company.
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