The Heuer Monaco Reference 1133B: the world’s first square waterproof automatic chronograph, a watch that nobody wanted in 1969 and everybody wanted after 1971, and the object that made Steve McQueen and a blue dial inseparable for fifty years.
Lee H. Katzin’s Le Mans (1971) is not, by conventional standards, a narrative film. It has almost no dialogue in its first thirty-seven minutes. Its plot, such as it is, follows Michael Delaney, played by Steve McQueen, as he races a Gulf Porsche 917 at the twenty-four-hour endurance race and processes the guilt of a previous accident. McQueen, who had been trying to make the film for years and put his own production company’s finances into it, insisted on an authenticity bordering on documentary: real race footage, real drivers, minimal dramatic contrivance. The result is a film about speed and concentration and the particular silence inside a racing driver’s mind, and it is beautiful in ways that more narratively conventional films are not.
On McQueen’s wrist throughout, visible against the blue and orange of the Gulf livery on his race suit, is a Heuer Monaco reference 1133B, blue dial, white registers, red chronograph minute hand, crown on the left side. Heuer products appear for more than fifteen minutes of screen time. When the film was released, it struggled commercially. But the image of McQueen in the racing suit with the Monaco on his wrist endured, reproduced in photographs, in posters, in the consciousness of anyone who had ever cared about racing, watches, or the particular quality of cool that McQueen carried entirely without effort. Over the following decades, the 1133B became known simply as the McQueen Monaco. Watches with confirmed film provenance have sold at auction for $2.2 million. An example without direct film connection currently costs several thousand dollars at minimum. In 1969, when the watch launched, it retailed for $200 and nobody bought it.
More on the film: imdb.com/title/tt0067083 and on the watch’s auction history: phillips.com
How the Monaco Got to Set: Jo Siffert, Don Nunley, and a Table of Watches
The sequence of connections that placed a Heuer Monaco on Steve McQueen’s wrist for Le Mans is itself a small piece of cinema and watchmaking history. Jack Heuer had established a commercial partnership in 1970 with the Swiss Formula 1 driver Jo Siffert, the brand’s first racing ambassador, whose white overalls bore the Heuer logo and whose visible presence on the international racing circuit was the brand’s most effective marketing tool. Siffert drove for Porsche, and when McQueen’s production company Solar Productions began filming at the actual Le Mans circuit in 1970, Siffert was involved in the production as an advisor and driver trainer, helping McQueen develop the skills needed to drive the Porsche 917 at racing speeds.
McQueen modelled his character on Siffert’s professional image, wearing a version of Siffert’s Gulf livery racing suit with the Heuer logo on the chest. The watch had to follow. Property master Don Nunley had been supplied with timing equipment, stopwatches, and watches by Heuer, and when the question of what Delaney would wear on his wrist was raised, he assembled a selection for McQueen to choose from: Rolex, Omega, Longines, and Heuer models were on the table. According to the Sotheby’s catalogue account, when McQueen showed interest in an Omega Speedmaster, it was noted that the Speedmaster had just gone to the moon and was known as an astronaut’s watch, and that wearing one would look incongruous next to the Heuer logo already on his suit. Siffert wore the round Heuer Autavia on the track, but McQueen chose the square Monaco. The unconventional geometry, the bold blue, the complete departure from anything else in the selection: all of it was entirely consistent with how McQueen chose everything else in his life.
Nunley sourced six Monaco reference 1133B examples for the production. Four had leather straps, two were fitted with steel bracelets. McQueen rotated through all six during filming. At the end of production, he gave one to his chief mechanic Haig Alltounian, engraved on the case back “TO HAIG LE MANS 1970.” Alltounian reportedly refused it, saying McQueen should keep it for himself or give it to his wife or son, at which point McQueen told him it already had his name on it. That specific watch sold at Phillips in December 2020 for $2,208,000, the most expensive Heuer ever auctioned.
Project 99: The Race to Build the First Automatic Chronograph
The Monaco’s place in horological history is not merely cinematic. The calibre that powers the 1133B, Calibre 11, is one of the most historically contested movements in the history of watchmaking. The story begins with what became known as Project 99, a secret consortium formed in the mid-1960s between Heuer, Breitling, Hamilton-Buren, and the ébauche module specialist Dubois-Depraz, with the shared goal of developing the world’s first automatic chronograph movement before anyone else.
The project’s solution was modular: Buren’s 3.2mm-thick Calibre 1280 Intramatic micro-rotor base movement, just thick enough to power the watch, was mated by four screws to Dubois-Depraz’s 8510 chronograph module. The micro-rotor, recessed into the movement rather than sitting above it in the conventional oscillating weight configuration, kept the total stack height manageable for a case that could actually be worn. On March 3, 1969, Heuer and the other consortium members launched the Chronomatic, with Calibre 11 simultaneously unveiled at press conferences in Geneva and New York. That same year, entirely independently, Zenith produced the El Primero and Seiko introduced its own automatic chronograph in Japan. The race to the first was three-way, and the question of who crossed the line first is one that horological historians have debated ever since. What is not disputed is that all three arrived in 1969, and that the world of watchmaking was never the same after it.
The Case: A Square With No Business Being Waterproof
The Heuer Monaco’s physical form is the work of Erwin Piquerez, a Swiss case manufacturer who had developed and patented a technique for achieving water resistance in a square case, a combination that the watch industry had considered functionally incompatible. The solution was architectural: four notches in the case that clipped into the back under tension, creating a seal without the thread engagement of a conventional screw-down case back. Piquerez had the patent; Jack Heuer negotiated exclusive rights and named the watch after the most famous motor racing circuit in the world.
The 1133B case measures 40 by 38.5mm, not quite a true square, with sharp right-angled edges, polished and brushed surfaces in combination, and a domed rectangular Plexiglass crystal, straight at the sides and slightly rounded at twelve and six o’clock. The crown sits on the left side of the case rather than the right, a consequence of the micro-rotor movement’s internal geometry: the Calibre 11 rotates the base movement 180 degrees to position the crown on the non-dominant side, where it poses no obstruction during wear and requires no winding by the wearer. Water resistance is 100 metres, remarkable for a square case at the time of introduction and sufficient for any non-professional aquatic use.
The Dial: Blue, White, Red, and Unmistakable
The 1133B dial is a petrol blue, a specific shade that sits between navy and slate with a metallic quality that catches light differently at different angles. The two chronograph registers, thirty-minute elapsed time at nine o’clock and a running seconds counter at three, are white, creating a strong contrast against the blue ground. The central chronograph minute hand is red, a detail that reads at speed and in peripheral vision without requiring the wearer to look directly at the watch. Horizontal hour markers, applied and polished, run around the dial interior. The date window at six o’clock is framed cleanly without a magnifier.
The Calibre 11 movement beats at 19,800 vibrations per hour with a 42-hour power reserve. It is a 17-jewel movement, certified as meeting a standard adequate for a sports chronograph without the additional COSC certification that a dress watch would require. The movement is not visible from the solid case back, which bears the Heuer logo and the stamped reference “Tool No 033,” the latter designating the specific opening tool required for service.
The Six Years, the Hiatus, and the Return
The Monaco 1133B was produced from 1969 to approximately 1975, a six-year run that ended when the quartz crisis dismantled the commercial foundations of the Swiss mechanical watch industry. Heuer continued under various forms of ownership through the 1970s and 1980s, and the Monaco disappeared entirely from production. It was revived in 1998 under TAG Heuer, by which point the image of McQueen in the Gulf suit had become one of the most reproduced photographs in the history of watch marketing, and the 1133B had become an object of considerable collector desire. The revival was commercially successful in a way the original never was. In 2009, a limited edition of 1,000 pieces in the McQueen configuration, blue dial with white registers and the crown on the left, celebrated the watch’s fortieth anniversary. The Monaco is now a permanent line in TAG Heuer’s catalogue, produced in continuous generations and collaborations, all of them carrying the square case that Piquerez patented and Jack Heuer named after a race.
More on the Monaco’s full history: monochrome-watches.com/complete-history-tag-heuer-monaco-chronograph and on Steve McQueen’s watch collection: swisswatchexpo.com/thewatchclub/2025/09/24/steve-mcqueen-watches
Technical note: Heuer Monaco Reference 1133B, introduced March 3, 1969, produced until approximately 1975. Stainless steel square case, 40mm width by 38.5mm height, Piquerez-patented waterproof square case architecture with tension-notch sealed back, 100m water resistance. Crown positioned on left side. Plexiglass domed crystal. Matte petrol blue dial, two white chronograph registers (30-minute at 9 o’clock, seconds at 3 o’clock), red central chronograph minute hand, date window at 6 o’clock. Calibre 11 automatic chronograph movement, micro-rotor self-winding, 17 jewels, 19,800 bph, 42-hour power reserve, modular construction from Buren Calibre 1280 base and Dubois-Depraz 8510 chronograph module. Reference designation: 11 indicates calibre, B indicates blue dial. Grey-dial variant: reference 1133G. Six examples of the 1133B supplied to the Le Mans production, two of which sold at auction for $799,500 (2012) and $2,208,000 (2020) respectively.
Details
Brand:
Marketplace Price
€15 000
Movie Year:
1971
As seen on:
Movie/TV Series:
