Heuer Carrera 3647T

There really is no bad looking vintage Carrera.

The Carrera was one of Jack Heuer’s most passionate projects, and his design ethos for this watch can be summed up in one word: legibility. Jack wanted a watch that was stylish and functional, a watch that gives you everything you need and nothing you don’t.

For a watch designed in the late 1960s, the Carrera remains a stunner, proving the brilliance of Jack’s design philosophy. A clean dial never goes out of style, and it makes the Carrera an easy watch to dress up or down. At 36mm, the case wears extremely well on the modern wrist, its long beveled lugs making it feel a bit beefier while still slipping easily under a cuff.

Carreras were produced in a variety of styles with a range of dials configurations, including relatively standard black and silver dials and the rarer, more sought after panda dials.  Still rare, but slightly more available and affordable than the coveted panda dials, are the black and silver dials with added tachymeter, decimal or pulsometer chapter rings in red, blue, white and black.  These rings add a wonderful touch of color to an otherwise simplistic dial, making them a particularly attractive option for the enterprising collector.  

Manufactured circa 1970, this particular Carrera, a lovely Reference 3647T, is powered by the robust manually-wound Valjoux 92 chronograph movement, with double subsidiary register layout. The Valjoux 92 is a derivative of the triple register Valjoux 72 that we all know and love, with similar architecture and quality, simply without an hour register. These Valjoux 92-equipped Carreras have a cleaner look and feel especially modern today, as many brands use this layout for their new releases.

We have been so blown away by the demand from our clients for these watches that we’re officially declaring 2015 the Year of the Carrera. With values for early manual-winding Heuer chronographs on the rise, you won't want to miss out on snatching up one of these beauties before they go stratospheric like too many other vintage pieces of this caliber.

For an in depth look at early Heuer Carreras, check out this great piece by our friend Eric Wind over at Hodinkee, HERE.