La plupart des catégories de montres-outils ne nous donnent qu'un accès virtuel aux aventures pour lesquelles elles ont été créées. Je ne piloterai jamais de chasseur ni de train, mais je conduis des voitures et des camions tout le temps. En fait, j'adore la conduite longue distance à travers des paysages magnifiques. Oui, GPS, smartphones et montres intelligentes ont fait de la plupart des montres des anachronismes, mais si, comme moi, vous aimez aller sans appareil afin de goûter à l'autonomie douce d'un voyage routier de l'ancienne école, puis l'utilisation de Gavox Roads nous emmène au-delà de make-croyance et en utilité. Lors d'une conversation avec Happé, il a mentionné la mise en place de l'alarme de Roads pour me rappeler de prendre un repos ou d'épeler un autre conducteur, et j'ai immédiatement eu l'occasion de faire quelques voyages routiers à venir.

Le mouvement Ronda 5130D est une unité à quartz avec un ensemble de caractéristiques élaboré. Le chronographe compte des secondes sur la main centrale, tandis qu'un totalisateur à deux mains accumule 30 minutes et 12 heures sur le cadran à 9. A 3 secondes, et à 6 secondes, c'est un autre sous-dial à deux mains pour régler l'alarme. Nous avons aussi un affichage de la date, une lunette de 60 minutes et une échelle de tachymètre. Se déplacer autour de toutes ces fonctionnalités est un peu difficile au début, mais une fois que vous le faites quelques fois il est assez intuitif. Pour ceux qui sont curieux de savoir comment opérer ce mouvement, Michael Happé nous montre lui-même dans la vidéo ci-dessous. (Notez que la montre dans la vidéo n'est pas les Routes).

One downside to the Ronda 5130D is that if you’ve run the chronometer past one minute and then reset it, the totalizers spin for as long as 21 seconds in order to return to zero. This doesn’t preclude lap timing, however, as one can employ what I’ll call the rattrapante fantôme or, less pretentiously in English, phantom split-seconds. A true rattrapante has two seconds hands, one that can be stopped for a reading and another that keeps tracking elapsed time; when you release the stopped hand, it “catches up” to the running hands. On the Ronda 5130D you can do this with just one set of hands. You stop the chrono, take a reading, and then send the hands racing forward to catch up to the actual, but invisible, elapsed time. Voilà: rattrapante fantôme.

Typically I’d balk at the rectangular date window at 4 o’clock, but I’ve actually lost track of the date on road trips and appreciate it in this context. Further, on a watch that’s chockablock with functions, sealing the date wheel behind the dial would be out of whack. That date window reminds me of a spare tire bolted to the hood of an old Land Rover, which is strategically, if a little awkwardly, located to maximize functionality and storage space.

Legibility is a slightly reduced on two of the three editions of the Roads. The white syringe hands of the Icefields Roadway disappear against the white dial, and the Pacific Coast Highway edition’s black numerals are hard to read against the gray sub-dials. I have to concede that the overall aesthetic of these two watches is solid, and the legibility requirements of a scenic road trip are far mellower than, say, a P-40 War Hawk mission. The Atlantic Ocean Road edition, however, has superb legibility; its shimmery, deep aqua blue dial perfectly complements the orange and white hands.

The chamfered, uni-directional 60-minute rotating bezels keeps the Roads from being just another Daytona or Speedmaster homage. One may wonder why a car watch doesn’t feature a tachymeter scale on the bezel, but even here we find a consistent logic at work, as a fixed tachy bezel would mean fewer functions and a played-out configuration that emphasizes high-speed track driving rather than touring through gorgeous scenery.

But don’t imagine for a moment that Gavox would forego a tachymeter scale. It sits atop a very tall and narrow chapter ring—an unusual but smart solution. While my eyes struggle a bit to make it out, it’s far easier to see than if it were lurking in the shadows of the dial’s edge, which is common on many chronographs. Admittedly, the tachymeter is probably the least used function on any chronograph today, so relegating it to a somewhat obscure location follows the road-tripping logic of this watch.At 41mm across with a 51mm lug-span, the Roads should fit a lot of folks. The long lugs make a graceful arc downward and hug the wrist, and they look great doing it. You get both a 316L brushed steel Oyster-style bracelet and a leather strap with dimples across the back to help manage perspiration. One may have expected a fully perforated “rally strap,” but, as should be clear by now, the Roads isn’t trying to fit in with the Autodromo Stringback gloves you sport when floating your vintage Porsche 911 through a tight corner. Spring bars are screwed in through the drilled lugs, a nice solution for the capricious strap-swappers among us.While using the Roads, I began to experience nostalgia for the digital watches of my younger years. I’m remembering the nerdy button-pushing I would entertain myself with during boring history lectures, but it is the months I spent driving all over the US in a VW van back in the early ’90s that come surging back to me as I fiddle with the Roads. Leaving my mechanical watches safe at home, I wore a decidedly unhip LL Bean Casio with alarm, stop watch, and strap-mounted compass—all of which I actually used. Yes, minimalist mechanical watches are more hip, but maxed-out quartz watches have their nostalgic charms, too.

I wish there were more watches dedicated to road trips. Loading up the Family Truckster for some quality tarmac time may not be as adventurous as piloting a P-40 fighter over Japan or traversing Antarctica in a sled, but the fact that road trips are missions we average folks actually accomplish makes the Gavox Roads a compelling proposition. In the end, our personal world-roving ought to be more poignant than living vicariously through someone else’s adventure, and the Gavox Roads is a great reminder to get out there, drive around, and see what happens. Gavox