The name comes from a race

Carrera is Spanish for race. But the watch is not named after the word: it is named after one particular race, which crossed Mexico end to end and was so dangerous it lasted only five editions.

Three thousand kilometres of road

The Carrera Panamericana was born in 1950 to celebrate the opening of the Mexican section of the Pan-American Highway. The first edition ran from Ciudad Juárez, on the US border, to the Guatemalan border: about 3,500 kilometres over several days, on open road. From 1951 onwards it ran the other way, south to north.

It started with road cars and within a few years became a factory race. In 1952 a vulture smashed through the windscreen of Karl Kling's Mercedes; he carried on and won. Juan Manuel Fangio won in 1953 in a Lancia D24; Umberto Maglioli in 1954 in a Ferrari 375 Plus. Every year drivers, mechanics and spectators died, more than twenty in all. After the 1955 Le Mans disaster, the race did not return.

A name overheard at Sebring

In 1962 Jack Heuer, great-grandson of the brand's founder, was at the 12 Hours of Sebring in Florida. There he met the parents of Pedro and Ricardo Rodríguez, the Mexican brothers racing for Ferrari, and heard from them the story of the Panamericana.

He liked the name. Carrera worked in several languages: road, race, course, career. He registered it and, in 1963, launched the first Heuer Carrera.

Read without thinking

The 1963 Carrera was designed for one thing: to be read at a glance, by a driver, with the car moving. A clean dial, slim hands, no spare text. The fifths-of-a-second scale left the dial for the inner ring that holds the crystal, leaving the centre clear.

Jack Heuer said he looked for references outside watchmaking, in architecture and modern design: Le Corbusier, Charles and Ray Eames and Oscar Niemeyer. A Swiss racing watch with a little of Brasília in its lines.

The first Carreras were hand-wound. The automatic came in 1969, with Calibre 11, one of the world's first automatic chronographs.

The 2011 Heritage

Mine is from another era. In 2011, at the Basel fair, TAG Heuer presented the Carrera Calibre 16 Heritage, ref. CAS2111.FC6292: steel, 41 mm, silver dial with blue accents, blue leather strap and a see-through back. The idea was to revisit the 60s design with the size and toughness of a modern watch.

Inside is Calibre 16, an automatic chronograph based on the Valjoux 7750, the most widely used chronograph engine in the Swiss industry. 28,800 vibrations per hour, 25 jewels, about 42 hours of reserve. Not an exclusive calibre, and it does not need to be: it is tough, easy to service and built to last.

Mine

I bought mine new, from an official dealer in Italy, in January 2015, with box, papers and a spare strap. When I reviewed the collection to slim it down, it went on the list of the ones that stay.

On the wrist it shows up mostly on work days. 18 logged wears, 5.9% of the rotation, the last on 2 November.