Original vintage 1970s Heuer Autavia Chronograph and Parnelli Jones Viceroy Cigarette Advertisement
Dimensions: Roughly 10.5 inches wide by 13 inches high; small tear at top, which shouldn't be visable when framed.
There’s no denying vintage Heuer has seen a tremendous increase in popularity, with the reissuance of numerous references from their back catalog - always sans "TAG" nomenclature - to include the Autavia, Monza, Carrera, and Monoco, and infamously (in our opinion), the Formula 1 Kith/Heuer collab.
Heuer’s long connection with auto racing can be traced back to at least 1962, when a youthful Jack Heuer arrived in the United States to sell the Swiss company’s bestseller – stopwatches. Motorsports – in particular, Formula 1 – soon came to be sponsored, and then dominated by Heuer timepieces.
In the 1970s, after the Quartz Crisis (brought on by Seiko, naturally) began to devastate the Swiss watch industry, Jack Heuer would pursue other avenues to bolster sagging sales of Heuer watches – and from this difficult time came a unique partnership.
Viceroy – an American brand of cigarettes, now owned and manufactured by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in the United States and British American Tobacco outside of the United States – introduced by Brown & Williamson (B&W) as a mid-priced brand in 1936, with the claim to be the world's first cork-tipped filter cigarette.
During the same 1970s-era as flagging Heuer sales, B&W realized their Viceroy cigarette brand was mainly smoked by women and couples because the Viceroy brand was, "less masculine than its key competition" and the brand had a "feminine orientation" according to internal documents.
Heuer was struggling to sell watches, Viceroy its cigarettes.
Arrive left stage – a savior in the form of Jack Heuer, who proposed a new version of his famed Heuer Autavia as part of a cross-branding cigarette/chronograph promotion. Heuer produced this special version of the Heuer Ref. 1163, the Calibre 11 1163V, for the team-up - and Viceroy offered the watch for $88 when combined with a single box top from a Viceroy Cigarette carton.
Both then approached the famous Parnelli Jones Racing team with a proposal to promote the sportsman’s cigarette and Autavia chronograph, respectively. And B&W, Viceroy’s parent company, went one step further, something Heuer would later repeat over (and over again, to witness the company’s 2024 decision to do so) – namely, to sponsor Jones’ Racing team in autosport championships such as the United States Auto Club and Formula 1 to give the brand a more "masculine" attitude, similar to Marlboro.
B&W / Viceroy would sponsor Jones’ Formula 1 racing team during the 1974 and 1975 season. The joint promotion was great branding (and financial) success for Heuer and laid the foundation for a subsequent successful rise. Viceroy cigarettes are still sold widely throughout Europe and the Americas.
Parnelli Jones
One of the most versatile drivers in history, Jones was so highly rated by all his competitors, including several of the best from Europe. He only competed in the Indianapolis 500 seven times, yet led in all but two of them for a total of 492 laps, still the eighth-highest laps led total in the race’s history.
And in the only two starts he didn’t lead – 1965 and 1966 – he ran many laps in second place, finishing in that position in 1965 and retiring from there with mechanical trouble in 1966. Jones is the only person ever to have led the Indianapolis 500 for 400 or more miles on two occasions. The first came when he won in 1963 and the second when his Andy Granatelli-entered, STP turbine-powered car failed after leading 171 of the first 196 laps in 1967.
Winner of the pole position with track-record qualifying speeds faster than 150 mph in 1962 and 1963, Jones never started lower than sixth in any of his seven “500s.” Even after retiring from INDYCAR SERIES competition as a driver, somewhat prematurely in 1968 at the age of only 34, the street-smart Jones continued to be a winner.
He fielded a team with a longtime business partner Vel Miletich that won the “500” in 1970 and 1971 with a pair of PJ Colt chassis, built in-house under the direction of chief mechanic George Bignotti and driven by Al Unser. This combination also won the United States Auto Club National Championship in 1970 followed by a second and third straight title in 1971 and 1972 with former motorcycle racing standout Joe Leonard behind the wheel.
Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing even briefly ventured into Formula One. They fielded Mario Andretti in the 1974 season-closing Canadian and United States rounds, followed by the entire Grand Prix circuit in 1975, and all the races up through the Long Beach, California, round in spring 1976, at which point lack of sufficient sponsorship brought the campaign to an end.
During this same period, the team also fielded Andretti and Unser in the Sports Car Club of America’s Formula 5000 road racing series and the USAC Dirt Car (later Silver Crown) series on 1-mile dirt ovals, the two drivers consistently recording top-three finishes in each of these widely contrasting forms of motorsport.
Parnelli Jones was inducted into numerous Halls of Fame, including the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame, the National Motorsports Hall of Fame and both the National Sprint Car and National Midget Halls of Fame. He passed away peacefully with his family by his side June 4, 2024, in Torrance, California, at the age of 90.
Find the smaller variant of this same advert here.