There has been a lot of discussion recently at Onthedash.com about the Heuer range of diving watches. These first appeared in the late 1970s and are still a staple part of the TAG Heuer range today with the excellent Aquaracer series (and especially the Aquagraph with its divers kit).
My favourite diver is the 1000m diver- model ref. 980.023L, pictured below:
This is the only Heuer diver with the crown at 4pm and has a great chunky feel to it. It can be described as the “poor-man’s” Autavia Diver 100, with a very similar dial, bezel and Mercedes hands.
The watch is powered by a ESA quartz movement and came on a standard tropic rubber strap with divers extension, as well as on a jubilee bracelet.
This diver stayed on during the TAG years, with an automatic ETA variant, as well as a rare yellow face luminescent model. There was also a TAG Spirotechnique version, which is the rarest of them all.
Spirotechnique as you may know was a famous French company that were the leaders in underwater breathing apparatus. There are some great photos here along with more information about the history of this watch here.
As well as being available as a TAG Heuer, there was also a variant of this watch made for Auricoste, a French company that specialises in providing watches to the French navy. Many of the Auricoste watches come with decommissioning papers, which adds to their value.
The Auricoste Spirotechnique is almost identical to the TAG variant, expect for the white hands and Auricoste branding.
Cheers Arno
