My First....

[drunken monkey]

....for as long as I can remember, I was a car nut...

One of my favourite things as a child was badly dubbed (Japanese) anime that was customarily copied and passed around friends and family and my absolute pride and joy were two episodes of Arrow Emblem: Hawk Of The Grand Prix, a racing anime that was so cool that Niki Lauda turned up as a character (un-endorsed of course...)


But I digress.
My real point was that as a kid, I was hugely aware of that red and green badge present at nearly every racing type event. I didn't know who they were except that they were the guys who did the timing for things like skiing and of course Formula One.

That is of course until one day, whilst checking out yet another article about the McLaren F1 where they mentioned that there were special editions of a watch that was made with your F1 chassis reference to match your car.
The watch?
TAG Heuer 6000.

That's when I did whatever reading I could and found out that TAGHeuer owned a chunk of McLaren and vice versa, McLaren owned a chunk of TAGHeuer.
That was and is cool. What was even cooler was that it was one of two watches that Ayrton Senna wore.
That pretty much sealed the deal.

(old photo)



Basically, I bought this because TAG, as well as making watches under the guise of TAGHeuer, were also making things like this


That went into cars like this


And that was my watch since 1997-1998 (I can't actually remember).
It was very much a product of the mid-late 1990s where design was more important than anything else; when fancy ad agencies were creating atmospheric, esoteric and occasionally abstract campaigns.. The bracelet is a massively overly designed and stupidly intricate bit of metal work that if it adorned a different brand, especially today, it would be heralded as genius and beautiful but alas, it's on a TAGHeuer so the only thing that gets mentioned is that it can be a bit fragile and the many many (over 250 on default fitting) parts means that there are lots of weak points for failure. For the record, this 15+ year old example is still 100% original with only 3~4 battery changes.

I don't wear this often now but I always check out the listings for other versions of this watch because I always feel the need to have a proper collection of these. The grey dial they used is very good looking with the mix of brushed and polished surfaces and well, there's always a place for a Chronometer version of these. The mechanical chronograph too is a bit of a bargain as it only came in Chronometer spec and has, unlike most of today's TAGHeuer chronographs, a 3-6-9 layout.

[Nokie]

Nice post. Very enjoyable reading.

[Richmondmike]

Thanks, I love that watch, as another lifelong F1 and McLaren fan I will have to try and pick one of those 6000s up if they are not horrendously expensive.

[drunken monkey]

6000s are actually quite cheap and the chronometer models a bit under-priced for the quality of case/bracelet work you get.
On the other hand, early bracelets have been know to suffer as it isn't the most rugged of designs and a replacement is likely to cost you more than what you'll pay for the watch.

£600-700 should get you decent chronometer model; the difficult bit is finding the exact one you want as they made quite a few different dial finishes on them and the chronograph/chronometer ones should be about 800-1000 and these have the additional benefit of being more modern sized.
By the same token, the Kirium models, which I've always kinda seen as a stream-lined 6000 tend to be cheaper still but the chronograph isn't chronometer.

[alon]

Love the construction of the strap of the 6000! Thanks for sharing.