Steve McQuee

Forty years after its birth as the world’s first square-cased water resistant sports watch, and deified a year later, thanks to Steve McQueen who famously strapped it on during the set of his 1970 movie smash, Le Mans, TAG Heuer‘s Monaco remains an icon for fans of sport watches, with the ability to turn perfectly coherent gentlemen into squealing school boys with each new roll-out.

This year, the brand has gone the whole nine yards to celebrate its 40th birthday. There is an ultra-robust concept watch, the Monaco Twenty Four (read about it in Lab Dance), an all-white beauty for the lasses (see Dame Game), and two limited editions – the Calibre 12 Chronograph and the Automatic Calibre 11 Chronograph which are the subjects of our affection in this review.

First up is the Calibre 12 Chronograph, a 5,000 piece limited edition collection forged out of an alliance with motor-racing titan, Gulf Oil (hence its nickname Gulf Limited Edition). Breaking out with a spanking new anti-reflective sapphire crystal that wraps around the front and back, the watch is given a fresh breath of air with a powerful new movement, Calibre 12, derived from a Dubois Depraz 2008 module.

Automatic Calibre 11 Chronograph

Upsized to 39mm for contemporary flair, the watch takes further design cues from McQueen’s Porsche Gulf 916K, seen in the Le Mans movie, with a grey meteor dial bearing its signature orange and blue racing stripes and a ‘Gulf’ logo imprinted on the dial.

Jack Heuer

But if you ask us, it is the Automatic Calibre 11 Chronograph that truly sets our hearts racing. A 1,000-piece limited re-edition straight out of horological back pages, the watch spells vintage cool from the word go – brushed steel case, blue dial with red accents and a left hand crown that mimics its original 1969 styling. In fact, we’ll go even further to say that it will be a hot auction piece, thanks to the stamp of the original ‘Heuer’ logo on its dial.

Further fuelling its collector‘s cachet is its case back bearing the signature of TAG Heuer‘s honorary chairman, Jack Heuer, and special box set that includes a second blue alligator strap as well as a Steve McQueen commemorative tome. Life truly begins at 40.