Heuer

Vintage watch collectors stare at their watches and wonder about the life they lived. Who was the pilot or diver who wore the Vietnam era Benrus Type-1 watch?  Who was the enthusiast who purchased the gold Patek Philippe split second chronograph in the 1920s?  Did they time cars, horses or runners, or only wear the watch for their own satisfaction?    

For today’s collectors, the dream shot is a statement from the original owner describing their use of the watch.  In most instances, however, we hope that a Google search will lead us to interesting records or photos.  Sometimes, the most that we can hope for is a colorful obituary.  We come to expect very limited information about our watches, as we imagine the lives that they lived.  

In 2010, vintage Heuer enthusiast Jeff Stein bought a large plywood box (approximately 30 inches by 20 inches) that housed an old Heuer timing board, equipped with a pair of Autavia dashboard timers.  Now, some 14 years later, after analyzing some photos clipped to the timing board, two stickers that remain attached, and sheets that show data from races held exactly 51 years ago – and spending countless hours in racing archives – Stein has assembled the history of the team, and some of the cars and racers, that used this old timing board.  Yes, this timing board lived an interesting life – from recording the times of Al Unser’s winning Pikes Peak Hill Climb car in 1965 to Clay Regazzoni Formula 5000 Lola in 1973, with multiple appearances at the Indianapolis 500 and other Formula 5000 races in the intervening nine years.  

Here, we present a sampling of the archeological highlights of this unique piece of racing memorabilia.  

The Heuer timers are the easy part of the story, a matching pair of Autavia dashboard timers from the late 1950s, co-branded with Abercrombie & Fitch, the retail store and mail order supplier that offered top-quality gear to the world’s leading adventurers.  The Autavias had 12-hour stopwatch capacity; this version had the tachymeter scale printed on the dial, so that racers could convert elapsed time over a measured distance to miles per hour.   

A sticker on the bottom right corner of the timing board identifies Eisert Racing Enterprises as the owner of the board.  Born in 1931, Jerry Eisert was an independent car builder who seems to have “arrived” in Indy car racing (circa 1964) when he secured the support of J. Frank Harrison, a wealthy businessman from Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Eisert built a series of “Harrison Special” racers, always combining sleek lines with aerodynamic innovations.  In 1965, Eisert built from scratch a novel “spaceframe” car, which Al Unser drove to win the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.  

A sticker on the timing board that converts lap times to miles per hour (with its range from 155 MPH to 180 MPH) would confirm its use at Indianapolis in the mid-to-late 1960s.  This is when top qualifying speeds jumped from an average of under 150 MPH for the first four years of the decade to 170 MPH for the last four races of the decade.  

Records from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway confirm that Eisert Racing entered its first Harrison Special car at the Speedway in 1965, although two drivers (Al Unser and Skip Hudson) failed to make the field.  Eisert’s “Harrison Special”, driven by Ronnie Duman, made the field in 1966, qualifying 33rd in the field of 33 cars.  Sadly, the car also finished 33rd, the victim of a crash on the very first lap, that took 11 cars out of the race.  Still, Eisert and his Harrison Special had made the field and taken the green flag, itself an accomplishment for an independent car builder.  Ironically, Eisert received Indy’s 1965 “Mechanical Achievement Award” for his car, even though the car didn’t complete a lap of the race.  

Eisert and Harrison took two cars to the Brickyard in 1967, but both cars failed to qualify for the race.  The 1967 season marked the end of the partnership between Eisert and Harrison.  For the 1968 Indy 500, Eisert served as chief mechanic for the Eagle Ford that Johnny Rutherford drove to an 18th place finish.  Later in that season, four Eisert-built cars were in the field at Riverside, with Peter Revson driving one to a 10th place finish.  Soon, however, Jerry Eisert would turn his attention to a new brand of racing, known as Formula 5000.  

The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) created the wildly-popular Can-Am racing series in 1966, with the lack of restrictive rules allowing teams to test the limits of prototype engineering and speed (and noise).  In 1968, the SCCA created what would soon be known as the Formula 5000 series, for formula cars powered by 5.0 liter engines.  The races were competitive, the drivers were charismatic and the sounds of the V8 engines always excited the crowds.  Separate series were contested in the United States and England, and by 1973 it was clear that the U.S. series had made it to the top of the racing world, with Jody Scheckter, Brian Redman, Mark Donahue and Peter Gethin finishing atop the championship standings.

Eisert Racing Enterprises made the transition from Indy cars to the Formula 5000 series early in the game, producing “customer cars” starting in the inaugural 1968 season.  The timing sheets clipped to the timing board show that Australian open-wheeler Bob Muir drove a LolaT330 for the Eisert team for the 1973 season. Muir often qualified well (for example, fourth in the Michigan International race), but mechanical problems were the dominant theme of the season, with Muir earning only a single point, for a 30th place finish in the championship.  

There were approximately 20 timing sheets clipped to this Heuer timing board when it was purchased by Jeff Stein, and the top sheet under one of the clips indicated that the driver was “Clay Reg”.  Indeed, for the last race of the 1973 North American season (September 30), Regazzoni drove for the Eisert team, qualifying third in the Seattle race, behind Redman and Donahue, but retiring with a fuel cell problem after only five laps.  Two weeks later, Regazzoni would drive this same car in British Formula 5000 race, at Brands Hatch, finishing 12th.  

This timing board, with its matched Heuer Autavia dashboard timers likely dating from the late 1950s, appears to have been retired after the 1973 Formula 5000 season.  We can assume that for its future endeavors, Eisert Racing Enterprises would switch over to state-of-the-art Heuer electronic timers, perhaps the bright red Microsplit models first shown in Heuer’s 1973 catalog.

The 1960s saw dozens of teams compete in the top-tier racing series, such as Indy cars and Formula 5000.  Each of these teams must have had some sort of “big plywood box” to carry its timing equipment, but few of them survived the intervening decades. Fifty years later, the present lot -- connected to a man who build beautiful cars for leading drivers -- tells its own story, offering a unique perspective on the thrill of motorsports in the 1960s.