A result of the contraction of the two words "Automobil" and "Aviation", the Autavia was Heuer’s tribute to automobile race timing. Worn by many racetrack legends of the 60/70s such as Jochen Rindt, Jo Siffert or Clay Regazzoni to only mention a few, this model encountered great success when launched. Over the course of its history, the model housed several calibers and displayed a very wide variety of dial and bezel configurations.
The present example is affectionately nicknamed “Orange Boy” due to the bright accents of color on the hands and dial. Introduced around 1972, this reference 1163 came in two variations, an earlier example with the “Monaco style” orange striped hands like the present watch and a later version with orange edged hands. Housing the automatic Heuer cal. 12 the “Orange Boy” is very rare as less than 30 are known.