Now in its 101st year, and once more sponsored by TAG Heuer, the Indianapolis 500 is an annual car race held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana, taking place traditionally over Memorial Day weekend. Drivers race 200 laps, counter-clockwise around a 2.5 mile circuit for a huge distance of 500 miles, so it is a real test of endurance.

Heuer yet again saw a lucrative opportunity with this notorious race and in 1969 released a few hundred promotional watches for the pilots and sponsors of this adrenaline infused race. Many were sold in the gift shop next to the racing circuit. The first version of the Carrera reference 3147 timepiece had a date aperture located at 12 o’clock and was only produced for one year. The second version shows a different date position at 9 o’clock as illustrated with this watch.

Available with two dial versions, one with black dial without the registered ® logo and the other silver with the ® logo, those watches were predominately sold as souvenir watches. Produced in small batches, only a handful of these watches (around 5 of each dial version) survived and so this would be an extremely lucky addition to any serious watch collection and is very much a “grail” watch.