{"id":378490,"date":"2026-04-14T05:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T05:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/378490\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T05:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T05:42:08","slug":"tag-heuer-majorly-refreshes-everyones-favourite-f1-coded-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/378490\/","title":{"rendered":"TAG Heuer majorly refreshes everyone’s favourite F1-coded watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

The TAG Heuer Monaco is big, square and uncompromising. It\u2019s \u201ca Marmite watch\u201d, brand heritage<\/a> director Nick Biebuyck freely admits. But, as with Marmite, sometimes something bold really hits. The Monaco was launched in 1969 to commemorate the Grand Prix of the same name, hence its chronograph function and car dashboard-style subdials. Motorsport creds were further embellished a couple years later, when Steve McQueen wore his TAG Heuer Monaco in the 1971 racing film Le Mans.<\/p>\n

Classic menswear moodboards<\/a> have never been the same since. And with Formula 1 bigger than ever, it makes sense that the moment also belongs to the Monaco. \u201cWalk around the track on a Formula 1 weekend,\u201d says Jeff Stein, founder of the online vintage Heuer archive OnTheDash, \u201cand you will see the Monaco \u2013 on enthusiasts\u2019 wrists, as an oversized track clock, and on the podium.\u201d Notably, on the wrist of Max Verstappen, who has an armoury of high-spec, one-of-a-kind Monacos. \u201cWe are Formula 1<\/a>,\u201d says Biebuyck. \u201cTo be honest, it\u2019s a total waste of time for any other watch brand to put any money into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

To reassert this, if it needed any reassertion, TAG Heuer has got two big new Monaco releases for this year\u2019s Watches and Wonders. First up is a refresh of the core Monaco Chronograph model<\/a>, which hews much closer to the original 1969 design than in recent decades. \u201cMonaco was introduced in 1969,\u201d says Biebuyck, \u201cbut then discontinued in 1974 because it was a total commercial failure. No one understood this watch. It was like an alien spaceship had arrived, three years before the [Audemars Piguet<\/a>] Royal Oak [and] seven years before [Patek Philippe’s] Nautilus. [There were] no other real \u2018shaped\u2019 watches in the marketplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

The 1990s reissue had a case \u201cthat had nothing to do with the original. It was just like they saw a picture in a book. As a result, it\u2019s not that ergonomic.\u201d But this new one copies the original\u2019s design tricks \u2013 including a tapered convex caseback, and the crystal taking up \u201ca decent chunk of the height\u201d \u2013 so it wears a lot lighter than its size would suggest. The colour options include, naturally, a classic McQueen-style blue dial, plus one in racing green, and a natty two-tone number in titanium and pink gold.<\/p>\n

But the release that Biebuyck is really excited for \u2013 that he\u2019s wearing for our interview, in fact \u2013 is the Monaco Evergraph, a hyper-technical, skeletonised design that puts TAG Heuer in the arena with all the ultra-high-end watch brands. To zoom in on one aspect of the very impressive mechanical specs: it uses what\u2019s called \u201ccompliant mechanisms\u201d, which abruptly buckle back and forth, like squeezing a playing card, rather than the swinging motion of a spring. It means \u201cmuch less wear, much less friction\u201d than a traditional chronograph, explains Biebuyck. \u201cYou basically don\u2019t ever really need to service it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The TAG Heuer Monaco is big, square and uncompromising. It\u2019s \u201ca Marmite watch\u201d, brand heritage director Nick Biebuyck…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[111,139,69,53214,145,3604],"class_list":{"0":"post-378490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-tag-heuer","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-watches"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}