Lot 468

Heuer

Autavia Viceroy

An extremely rare vintage wrist chronograph in near mint condition, with date

This Viceroy model was launched in the U.S. during a special marketing campaign promoting the Viceroy brand of cigarettes at the same time. The company Heuer and the makers of the Viceroy brand were both suffering from colossal losses in sales in the early 1970s. As the owners of the tobacco company Brown & Williamson had a huge advertising budget available, they decided on a new advertising campaign together with Heuer; as Heuer’s new automatic chronograph was remaining firmly on the shelves at the time, the campaign would sell the watch for a mere 88 dollars. The concept was a massive success and Heuer had produced a bestseller.
Heuer’s Viceroy has a particularly striking colour scheme: taking its inspiration from the cigarette brand, whose colours were black, white and red, the Viceroy Autavia features a black dial, white subsidiary dials, a red chronograph hand and red accents on the applied hour markers.