TAG Heuer has unveiled their latest Carrera, another collaboration with Porsche, officially dubbed the Carrera Chronograph x Porsche 963. As watch enthusiasts know, there’s a range of how “Porschey” these collaborations get. Sometimes they simply have the German automaker’s badge slapped onto the watch somewhere, and sometimes the connection is very inside baseball, like when TAG made a new chronograph movement that accelerated at the same rate as a classic 911. This new watch is somewhere in the middle, with some clever visual winks to the car that inspired it, but nothing new under the hood.
The new watch takes its specific inspiration from Porsche’s success in endurance racing. The Porsche 963, developed under Le Mans Daytona Hybrid regulations, is the current pinnacle of Porsche’s expertise in endurance, a tradition that goes back decades. This is an aggressive take on the Carrera, which is a watch that we’ve seen wear many different capes in recent years. It’s a platform that is perhaps most at home as a traditional, elegant, gentleman’s racing chronograph, but can flex into something far more contemporary with relative ease.
The 44mm case is stainless steel and coated in black PVD, and has been accented with a carbon fiber bezel with a tachymetric scale. Naturally we get a complex, skeletonized dial (nothing says “modern and contemporary” like skeletonization, I guess) as well as plenty of lume. The lume is actually what most closely links this watch to the design of a Porsche: the subdials feature lumed blocks placed so that when illuminated they mimic the display on the dash of a modern 911.
We also get some more on-the-nose Porsche inspo in the places where you’d expect to find it. Red accents near 4:00 (and a red chronograph seconds hand) symbolize, according to TAG Heuer, the “excitement and adrenaline associated with the countdown to race start.” Got it. And if you ever forget the name of the automaker TAG has collaborated with here, all you need to do is flip the watch on its side, where you’ll find “PORSCHE” etched into the case flank,
Powering the watch is the same Calibre TH20-00 that is found in most other modern Carreras. This is a good, solid automatic chronograph movement with a vertical clutch and column wheel, as well as 80 hours of power reserve. The watch is 49.7mm from lug to lug, and 15.1mm tall, and is water resistant to 100 meters. The retail price is $9,200, and it’s limited to 963 pieces. TAG Heuer
