Heuer 1614 Chonograph (French Made)
Heuer 1614 Chronograph, Manual Valjoux 7765, French Made
This retro looking chrono was available in the late 70s alongside a few other French made models. I’m not entirely sure why they were made in France. The first 844 divers were made in France by Monnin at around the same time, so it could be presumed they made these too, but there is no Monnin markings anywhere on this model.
There appears to be several variations of the 1614, among the differences are: ‘Incabloc’ written under the Heuer shield, different hand sets/hand colour and the most obvious version with the Champion Sparkplugs co-branding resulting in a different placement of the Heuer sheild.
It’s powered by the well regarded, and tough Swiss Valjoux 7765, and has a two colour date wheel, the even dates are in black, odd in red. Apart from the dial, they are unsigned, with a blank crown and movement.
The 1614 has two brothers, the 1611 & 1589B that was a similar dial design, same movement & made in France too. The main differences is that they have a rather lovely white dial and more curvaceous case designs. There appears to have been a lot of these (NOS) 1611 cases/dials/handsets floating around and have been used to ‘make up’ NOS models. This isn’t so bad, some are true to the original, some deviate a little. There have also been various outright fakes that are easier to spot – some with PVD finishing, yellow dials etc. Thankfully the 1614 isn’t targeted as much as the ‘cooler’ white dial version, maybe because the fume dial & 70’s-tastic colouring isn’t as popular.
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