TAG Heuer’s Heritage Director talks 165+ years of chronograph history (& teases Watches and Wonders 2026)
Time+TideTAG Heuer doesn’t just make chronographs. It is the chronograph. For over 165 years, the brand hasn’t been chasing the complication — it’s been defining it. And with Watches and Wonders 2026 on the horizon, and a new calibre (TH-80 — yes, Nick let that slip) about to drop, there’s no better moment to understand what this brand actually is, and where it came from.
In this video, Zach sits down with Nicholas Biebuyck, TAG Heuer’s Heritage Director, for a deep dive through the brand’s entire chronograph lineage — from Édouard Heuer’s 1860s positioning as a stopwatch and chronograph specialist, to the 1916 Mikrograph that could measure to 1/100th of a second, the birth of the enduring Carrera and Monaco icons in the 1960s, to the legendary calibre 11 – the first automatic chronograph movement to market – in 1969, and the experimental era of the ’70s which explored colour and shape in Heuer designs along with new electronic and quartz technologies.
Here’s what makes this conversation genuinely essential viewing: it’s not a brand film. It’s a history lesson from someone who knows where the bodies are buried — including the quartz crisis years, the identity turbulence of the early TAG era, the wild conceptual swings under LVMH, and the hard-won return to form that got the Monaco and Carrera back to where they belong.
Along the way: the untold story of the Seafarer and its Abercrombie & Fitch origins. The moment Heuer went all-in on chronographs exclusively — and stayed there for 20 years. How the Formula 1 collection was simultaneously too successful to kill and too cheap to keep. And why the 1990s heritage revival wasn’t nostalgia — it was survival.
Zach and Nick then run through the current lineup of chronograph calibres in TAG Heuer’s catalogue, leading Nick to let slip the calibre name TH-80.
What exactly is the TH-80? That’s for another day. But everything that led to it? That’s what this video is about.