Weekly Watch Photo – Vintage Heuer Autavia GMT

Our Weekly Watch Photo has evolved from showing one photo to a set of photos, all showing the same or similar watches. Of course the watch(es) are beautiful and the photos are of such quality that they increase your desire to add this watch to your collection. Of course I cannot help myself and have to tell more about the watch in question, so the WWP is usually accompanied with background information or interesting facts about that watch. This week we’ll have a look at one of my personal favorites, the vintage Heuer Autavia GMT.

The photos are from Duncan (@thirtyfivemill.com), who has provided us with many Weekly Watch Photos. The very first Autavia chronograph with additional GMT hand was the manually wound ref. 2446 GMT. Later came the ref. 1163 GMT and the Autavia GMT we’re looking at today is a later model, ref. 11630 GMT. Both the ref. 1163 GMT and the ref. 11630 GMT are equipped with an automatic winding movement, while the older ref. 2246 GMT has a manually wound chronograph caliber with additional GMT function.

In 1969 Heuer introduced the world’s first automatic chronograph, caliber 11 (see here for more about that big moment in watch history). That movement was soon replaced by an improved version, caliber 12. The Heuer Autavia GMT that we’re showing you here is equipped with caliber 14, the GMT version of caliber 12.

Tip: when you’re looking for vintage Autavia watches, you can easily keep the earlier ref. 1163 apart from the later ref. 11630 models, which were introduced around 1972/1973. When looking at the watch from the front, the pushers of the older ref. 1163 models, you can see notches around the chronograph pushers. The newer ref. 11630 lacks these notches and pushers are recessed.

Two other differences between ref. 1163 and ref. 11630 are the chunkier case and the flat mineral crystal that made their appearance on the newer ref. 11630 models.

For more photos, visit Duncan’s website Thirtyfivemill.com