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Vostok-Europe Gaz Limo Watches Overview Video

Posted by Craig Hester on Sep 16th 2020

Vostok-Europe Gaz Limo Watches Overview Video

Greetings everyone. Greg Hester here with R2Awatches.com. And thank you for joining us again, as we continue on our journey through all the watches and accessories that are available at R2Awatches.com. If you are watching this on YouTube, be sure and hit like, and subscribe and ring that bell to get those early notifications. So, you know, right when we put a new video up, if you're watching this on Facebook, you want to join the private group, Vostok Europe Time Pieces. Don't let the name fool you. If we talk about all the watches that are available at R2Awatches.com, not just Vostok Europe, though, of course, we spend a lot of time talking about Vostok Europe. A lot of people love that brand. And if you really want to have a place where there's a lot of comradery, where people who enjoy the same watches that you do, and you don't have any negativity, which we just do not allow in our group of Vostok Europe Time Pieces is the place for you.

Today. We are talking about the Gaz Limo collection from Vostok Europe, the Gaz limo named after Brezhnev's limo, or it's mostly associated with him. This was a famous limousine from the 1970s that was used by Soviet dignitaries. In fact, the earliest versions of the Gaz Limo, the dial was actually pulled directly from the, inspired by or pulled directly from the dashboard clock. So there's basically when you're talking about the Gaz Limo collection, you're talking about really the only dress watch that Vostok Europe still has in its collection. Vostok Europe of course, these days is known for going to extremes that's their slogan among other things. The sky is no longer the limit and so forth. Vostok Europe has definitely become known now for building watches that are really extreme sport watches, but they wanted to make sure that they kept at least one line in the collection for those who wanted a Vostok Europe, but they wanted a more dress watch, a watch that they could wear that they could dress up or dress down.

I mean, the Gaz Limo is not what I would consider a purely dress watch. It's kind of a dress sport. You can still get this light on. You can still wear it in a casual setting or even with blue jeans, but you can also dress it up as you can tell by what I'm showing you right here. If you're not familiar with Vostok Europe, Vostok Europe is a boutique watch brand based in Vilnius Lithuania. We've been doing business with them for well more than 15 years now. And they are, every single watch is hand assembled at their facility. They're in Vilnius. I've been there many times, myself. They have seven full time watchmakers who assemble every single watch there. And every watch goes through a multipoint inspection process. I believe there's 28 different steps that it goes through, before they leave us accurate in terms of approval process of meeting their very stringent QC requirements.

Every watch is completely designed by Vostok Europe I like to talk about the fact that Vostok Europe does a tremendous amount for a boutique watch brand for a brand their size. It's really pretty what all they do because they really start with a blank piece of paper or more accurately, as I like to say, they start with a blank computer screen and they finish with a completed watch. Every single thing in a Vostok Europe is 100% custom. We have other videos at R2Awatches.com and on the R2Awatches.com YouTube channel where we go into greater depth about the history of Vostok Europe, about the construction process, the design process, their brand ambassadors, and so forth. So if you, if you haven't learned all the depth that you can about Vostok Europe, it's a good opportunity to do so to go look at those videos, we'll have them linked in the, below the video here on YouTube.

So as I said today, we are talking about the Gaz Limo named for the Gaz 14 limousine from the 1970s. I've got four different executions here. Now this is really just intended to be an overview. There are multiple color options with the Gaz Limo collection. Um, I've just got four here. I have the two of the NH 35 versions. That's the [inaudible], that's the workhorse movement from Seiko that the three hand work over from psycho that is in these two additions right here. Excuse me. That's the wrong one here with the, I guess you would call it bronze tone or yeah, bronze tone with the Rose, with the Rose gold and then the very much blacked out version with the black on black, on black with just a little bit of red highlights, uh, red and black being Bostok Europe's colors. Now these are fairly simple in terms of functionality.

It is an automatic three hand movement. Um, we're the only complication that's in an NH 35 would be the date, uh, to, because it's anything, anything more than actual timekeeping. Some people even argue that a second sweep, second hand isn't, isn't a complication, but I stick with it that the complication on here would be the date, because anything beyond timekeeping in a mechanical watch is considered a complication. Let me quickly give you the specs of the watch. Um, and these days I'm using cheat sheets a little bit more to make sure that I get everything exactly right when I'm talking about these on the videos. So we don't have a, we don't have one of my mistakes living in perpetuity on the video on YouTube. This is a 45 millimeter timepiece. I actually like to always double check that with my handy dandy caliber and show you the sign.

So from side to side, well, it's showing, okay,

Here we go. 44.7. So it's roughly a 45 millimeter timepiece. Let's see how thick it is. We are at 13.3 millimeters thick on this watch. The lug width is 23. And I'm going to give you the lug to lug. A lot of people like to have that from the bottom. Love to the top lug, this isn't going to be perfect guys, but I'm going to give you the, basically the rough idea from lug to lug is about 60 millimeters. Um, so this is by no means I small watch. I'm going to put it on my wrist and give you guys a quick wrist shot of at least one of them. This is by no means a small watch, but 45 today would be considered, um, you know, fairly standard sizes. It used to be that a 45 was a large watch. I can remember when we talked about 45, 45 millimeter watches being really pretty large watches, but those days are over. Um, you, you got to get up into the 47 48 category these days. If you're going to be talking about a really large time piece, um,

Forgive my being out of

Focus there while we're waiting for me to put this, watch on my wrist. All right, here we go. So here it is on a wrist shot. Let me get that in focus. Now, this is actually a really good size. Now my wrist is about seven and a half inches. So I do not have a big wrist, although because of the top of my wrist is fairly flat. I can actually wear fairly big watches. Um, you know, I'm always kind of skeptical about risk shots because it varies so dramatically, depending upon what risks you're talking about, you know, on a seven and a half inch wrist, this watch looks like it's fairly big. Um, you know, if you've got an eight, eight and a half inch wrist or something like that, if you're a bigger guy, this is obviously going to wear smaller. It really just depends on your risk, but there you get an idea of what it looks like.

That's the black and red that I'm showing you what the NH 35, like all of our stock Europe's this has the hardened gorilla glass K one mineral system that gives you basically the best of both worlds. If you look at crystals on the most scale, I, mineral crystal is a five Sapphire crystal is a nine, the gorilla glass or K one mineral system is a seven. So you get nearly the scratch resistance of Sapphire and you get nearly the shatter resistant of mineral. If you're not aware of that, a Sapphire while nearly impossible to scratch, um, can be, is, is not as shatter resistant as mineral crystals, mineral crystals, very, very difficult to shatter, but also are more prone to scratches, uh, with K one, you get right in the middle of that. So you've got really the best of both worlds, uh, in terms of, uh, functionality with your crystal. Now, all of these things,

Let me check.

Yeah, all of these are closed case backs. Uh, we don't have an exhibition case back among these. I actually am not sure if any of the gas limos, I think the small, I think the small power reserve has an exhibition case back, but anyway, you can see that on Archway watches.com. As I mentioned, this is just an example of the different gas limos. There are multiple colors. If you like something different. If you're not into the black and red, if you not, if you don't necessarily like the blue, there are a lot of other options. This is another one of the executions. This has several has more than one complication, actually a several complications. So this is I'll show you here. The skew number, the Y and eight four five six five five five zero. This is the why and eight for movement, which a 24 hour complication.

It also is. What's known as a power reserve. And if you watch, you'll see up here at the top, as I'm winding the watch, it's like a fuel gauge and it starts to show how I've wound the watch. And now you have a fuel gauge. I'm going to stop there. That's saying there's 20 hours because it went up to the 20 there's roughly 20 hours of power reserve. Now, if you didn't wind anymore, now this is an automatic time piece. So as you wear it on your wrist, you're going to wind it more and more. If you wore this every day, you shouldn't ever need to wind it. But I do like to remind people, if you get a watch and if you have an automatic or a mechanical time piece and you leave it on your dresser and you let it completely run, wind out, it is better to go ahead and give it about 10 or 20 wines.

When you put it on, just in case your wrist, doesn't give it enough energy because you will not get really good timekeeping if you don't have it wound up enough. And that is something that people will think something's wrong with. The watch when it's not, it's just a matter of that needed to be wound. These are all five ATM. Like I said before, there is no pretense that the gas limo is a sport watch or that it is a watch in the caliber in terms of sport caliber. Now, let me be clear. All the other, um, all of the other components are at the same level of, of top great, a quality that any Vostok Europe is. Um, but they didn't put in a, a higher water resistance on this. Because again, it's not intended to be a dive watch. These are intended to be sport, casual watches or dress casual watches, depending upon what nomenclature you prefer.

And then here we go. We have the, this is the Y and eight four, I believe. Nope, excuse me. This is the [inaudible]. This is the yam to the Waianae. Four is the one we were just looking at. Um, the [inaudible] movement. This is a multifunction. Now this one, I want to be clear only of the, of the four watches that we have here. This is the only one that has a court's watch. Um, this is a multifunction quartz watch the two most important functions that you're going to want to think about here. First of all, it has a sound alarm. I'm going to pull this out to the first position. I'm going to move this over to hold on for a second. There we go. Here we go. I'm gonna move this over to the microphone. And we're going to listen to the alarm.

I don't know how well that's going to come through because of other noises that ambient noises that may be down here in our little dungeon, where we do our shooting. But anyway, that's, that's the sound alarm. This is also a world timer. This top sub dial is the time for the secondary time zone. You use the pushers. When you have the crown pushed down all the way you use the pushers to move up or down to whatever country on the chapter ring or whatever city on the chapter ring you want to have. You want to see what time it is. And basically the secondary time zone here is going to be, it's going to be, um, tied to whatever time zone you're currently at. So if this is say 15 til here, I don't know if I've got this set on am or PM. Um, then the, the time at the, in the other location, and you can either go backwards or forwards depending upon where you are to save time, it's going to show you what time it is and the other location.

So let's say I'm whipping around here and it's going to show you the time in, Oh, who cares Denver, or we can go all the way around to, and now it's gonna be showing you what time it is in Melbourne. These are the, your current time zone. That's, what's important in terms of the dual time on the gas limo. Now, straps, there are several straps ops strap options on the gas limos. The ones you're looking here are the standard straps that come with the watch. On three of these, we have the integrated strap with that extra thick, near the end links. We have the integrated strap on three of these options. And then on this other one, this is the first time with the Waianae. For that. We have the handmade straps with the vegetable tan handmade leather from Italy, which is just, Oh, these are such subtle, wonderful, fantastically, great straps.

Uh, these, these, these handmade vegetable tan straps that now Vostok Europe is using on many of their lines. Now it doesn't integrate like the one you see on this watch, but it does create a beautiful, beautiful look on the time piece. So this is a basic overview of the gas 14 limo. Again, inspired by that amazing limousine from the 1970s. It's the one that's most associated with Brezhnev. Um, and again, the original gas limos, the actual, uh, dial configuration. Oh, one thing I did leave out. Now let's talk about luminosity for a minute, cause that's important on this. Watch every single one of these. Now I want to be clear, not every gas limo. I I'm I'm I'm doing the 45 millimeter guys in the most here. Um, I am not doing the 43 millimeters here that do not have tritium to technology. These, this set the 45 millimeters that I'm talking about here, these four among several other options.

And by the way, there are a whole new set of gas limos coming out, um, in this just the next few weeks in 2020. So if you're watching this, it's just put a note on it. We're in September of 2020, September, October, November, there's going to be multiple new gas limos coming out. This does have the treating them tube technology. Now, one of the things that's nice about that is you don't often see the Tridium tube technology. And if you're not familiar with that, is that gives you the constant illumination. Um, so you don't ever have to charge it up in the light like you do regular super LumiNova. You don't often see that in a dress watch. That typically is something that you only see in sport watches. So it's really nice that Plastiq Europe has an option for tritium tube technology in a dress watch.

And in fact, the tritium tubes are also they're counter sunk. So usually the Tridium sits right on top of the dial, which for a sport watch looks fine, but for a dress watch, you want to have a more, you want to have more clean lines. So if you look, you'll notice that the tritium tubes are actually counter sunk on the Vostok Europe gas limousine. So here we have it four examples of the gas limousine two with the three hand in age 35 Bulletproof use it forever at age 35 Seiko movement, and then two other psycho movements and two other executions with the champagne dial here and these beautiful, beautiful electric blue here, you have the Waianae four, which is your automatic open-heart. So you can see the beating heart of the movement with your, uh, with your power reserve and a 24 hour indicator. And then here you have the Y in, excuse me, the YMA I gotta look again, make sure I get it right.

The [inaudible] and this particular execution, which is the one with the secondary time zone and the sound alarm. And this also has a sound alarm. So this, this, this version has the 24 hour, uh, as a 24 hour time for the secondary time zone that has a sound alarm. And then you'll notice that because of the fact that the sweep second hand is the one that points or what would normally be where there's a sweep. Second hand is the one that points to whatever city you want to have the timekeeping on. You're going to see that the actual second hand is a sub dial on this. It is not the full sweep second hand. So those are the four executions that we're talking about today of the gas limo from Voss stock Europe. If you've been looking for a dress watch that you want to have, have all the styling and quality components that you're used to invest stock Europe. Um, but you'd like to have at least one or two dress watches in your collection. The gas limo is definitely what you're looking for until next time. I'm Craig Hester and Hey, keep watching.