The company’s new leadership under LVMH had lured Jack Heuer, scion of the watch company’s founding family, back into the fold as Honorary Chairman, and the result was a renewed commitment to reviving his most legendary brainchild, named after the tortuous Carrera Panamericana road race, as a leader model for the 21st century. While all this was happening, however, the iconic Carrera model, first launched in 1963, was quietly reclaiming its place as TAG Heuer’s preeminent sports watch collection. The Link – offered in both quartz and automatic versions – would be the last new product launched by TAG Heuer before it was acquired in 2001 by luxury group LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton), a transaction that would prove significant both for the Link collection and for the older, mostly dormant heritage models that it had largely replaced as the brand’s dominant sporty collection by the end of the 20th century: the Carrera and Monaco.Ī vintage advertisement for the TAG Heuer Link emphasizes the unique shape of the bracelet links. The rounded pebble-like edges of the case and bracelet links were slightly squared off, the S/El’s “Mercedes” hands were replaced by sword-style hands, oversized Arabic numerals were added at 12, 6 and 9 o’clock, and baton indexes supplanted the rounded, luminous indexes at the other hour markers. In 1999, with the mechanical watch renaissance just beginning to gather steam, TAG Heuer revisited the S/El, renaming it the Link to reflect the collection’s defining feature, and making a handful of small but significant aesthetic changes. The Link was TAG Heuer’s best-selling model during the 1990s.
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