While today you might associate James Bond with Omega watches, here is something you may not know: Before Bond strapped on his Seamaster, he wore a TAG Heuer diver in the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights.
This is the first time that Heuer/ TAG Heuer has been identified as being part of the rich legacy of watches worn by 007.
In fact it has taken Dell Deaton, a Bond aficionado who runs the website jamesbondwatches.com, more than two years to name the Heuer/ TAG Heuer 980.031 dive watch as being the watch worn by Bond as he attempts to dispose of yet another evil henchman.
Accurately identifying watches worn in older movies can be incredibly challenging, especially when sometimes all that’s available is a few seconds of blurry footage. Today life is easier, with watch companies lining up to tout their association with blockbuster films, but this hasn’t always been the case.
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Sometimes watch companies must wonder what the secret is to a developing a successful new model. Watches that are lovingly developed by the world’s most powerful luxury goods company and backed by history and large marketing budgets can sometimes fail to catch 
fire (TAG Heuer Autavia), yet others that are developed as side projects can turn into hugely popular models that enjoy success over more than a decade. The watch that has become known as the Heuer and TAG Heuer 1000 Professional series is a great example of the latter.
Having gone through the 1970s naming its watches after wonderfully evocative race tracks and cities, Heuer seemed to give up as the 1980s came around, simply using reference numbers in the place of model names. So the Heuer 1000 never really had a name for the first 5 years of its life and was instead known by its reference numbers- 844 and 980. It wasn’t until 1985 that the watch was given a proper name- The TAG Heuer 1000.
The 1000 was a watch that Heuer didn’t initially believe in enough to invest in tooling up for production itself, instead outsourcing the production to a French company in 1979. Heuer had produced diver watches before with the Autavia, but this was something different- a low cost diver model with the option of a quartz movement.
By the time the TAG Heuer 1000 Professional was finally retired in 1992/3, it had not only proved to be one of the most successful TAG Heuer watches, but had created a design template the survives today through the latest TAG Heuer Aquaracer.
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Cheers Arno
