Steve McQueen, Le Mans and the Heuer Monaco

Some watches become famous because of a film. The Heuer Monaco is the clearest case of all. In 1969 it was a strange, square chronograph that most buyers ignored. Two years later Steve McQueen wore it in Le Mans, and it became the most recognisable watch in racing cinema.

This is the story of the Steve McQueen Monaco: what it is, how it ended up on his wrist, and why it is still in the catalogue more than fifty years later.

The film: Le Mans (1971)

Le Mans was McQueen’s passion project. He plays Michael Delaney, a driver returning to the 24 Hours of Le Mans a year after a crash that killed a rival. The film was shot in 1970 on the real circuit, with real racing footage, and has very little dialogue: most of the story is told through engines, faces and details.

That is exactly why the watch matters. In a film with so few words, costume carries the character, and Delaney’s look was built to match the real drivers of the era: white racing suit, Gulf stripes, sponsor patches and a chronograph on the wrist.

How McQueen chose the Monaco

The best first-hand account comes from Don Nunley, the property master of Le Mans. In an interview with Quill & Pad, he explained that he gathered watches from five brands for McQueen to choose from: Tissot, Omega, Bulova, Rolex and Heuer.

McQueen’s first pick was an Omega. Nunley pointed out a problem: the racing suit already carried a large “Chronograph Heuer” patch. Wearing another brand on the wrist would not make sense. That narrowed the choice to Heuer, and between the Autavia and the Monaco, McQueen chose the Monaco.

The Heuer patch itself has a story. Swiss Formula 1 driver Jo Siffert, a friend of Jack Heuer and the brand’s first ambassador, raced with Heuer branding on his suit, and Delaney’s look drew on drivers like him. The Rake credits Siffert with connecting McQueen and the Monaco; Nunley’s account puts the final decision on set. Both versions point to the same thing: the watch followed the costume, not the other way around.

The Heuer Monaco 1133B, explained

The watch McQueen wore is the Heuer Monaco reference 1133B, launched on 3 March 1969. Three features made it unusual at the time:

• The square case. Developed by the case maker Erwin Piquerez, it was among the first square cases to be water-resistant, something many thought impossible with that shape.
• The Calibre 11. One of the first automatic chronograph movements, developed by Heuer together with Breitling, Hamilton-Buren and Dubois-Dépraz. Because the automatic module sat on top of an existing base, the crown ended up on the left side of the case, a detail you can see on vintage examples.
• The colours. A metallic blue dial, two square white sub-dials and red accents on the hands and markers. On film, next to the Gulf blue and orange, it looked like part of the costume.

The “B” in 1133B refers to the blue dial; a grey-dial version was made too. It is also worth clearing up a common mistake: McQueen’s watch is a Heuer, not a TAG Heuer. The TAG prefix only arrived in 1985, when the company was acquired by the TAG group.

How many Monacos were on set?

Films rarely use just one watch. According to Nunley, production needed six Monacos: one went missing almost immediately, one was worn by McQueen, and the others were backups, including one kept untouched for close-ups and publicity. After filming they went in very different directions: some were given away, two were later sold on eBay, and one is still unaccounted for.

That figure may not be complete. Documents from Nunley’s archive, presented by Sotheby’s in 2026, include a delivery record from June 1970 listing twenty automatic chronographs sent to the set, among them nine Monacos with blue and grey dials. How many were actually used on camera is still debated.

From $9,000 to $2.2 million

The screen-used Monacos have become some of the most valuable movie watches ever sold:

• 2012: a Monaco connected to the film sold at Profiles in History in Los Angeles for $799,500 including premium.
• 2020: the Monaco McQueen gave to his chief mechanic, Haig Alltounian, sold for $2.2 million at Phillips in New York. McQueen handed it over at the end of filming, engraved “To Haig Le Mans 1970”, thanking him for keeping him alive all those months on the track.
• 2026: a Monaco kept by Don Nunley, which he described in a sworn statement as the one McQueen wore most often on set, was offered at Sotheby’s New York in June with an estimate of $500,000 to $1 million. Its reported hammer price was $640,000.

For comparison, the two backups that were sold on eBay years earlier went for a little over $9,000 each.

The Monaco today

TAG Heuer has never let the Monaco go. Since the late 1990s the brand has produced faithful reissues of the blue 1133B, and today the Monaco is one of its core collections, with the McQueen configuration still the most requested.

Why this watch matters

Most screen-worn watches are remembered because of the actor. The Monaco is the rare case where the film changed the watch’s destiny: a model that sold poorly became an icon because one costume decision, made by a property master on a racing circuit, put it on the right wrist.

It is also a lesson in costume design. The Monaco was not chosen because it was expensive or because a brand paid for it, but because it made sense with everything else Delaney was wearing.

Prefer it in 60 seconds? Watch our Monaco reel on Instagram.

For another case where an actor’s watch said more than the script, read our story on Marlon Brando’s Rolex GMT-Master in Apocalypse Now. You can find more screen-worn watches in our On Screen section.