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Bell & Ross BR V2 V2-94 Bellytanker Chronograph Limited Edition 500 Automatic 41mm

Pre-owned () | Original box | Original papers
$3,795
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More About This Listing

Basic Info
Listing code E73NP2
Brand Bell & Ross
Model BR V2
Dealer product code 64620
Movement Automatic
Case material Steel
Bracelet material Leather
Year of production Unknown
Condition
Scope of delivery
Original box, original papers
Location United States of America, Florida, Pompano Beach
Price $3,795
Availability Item is in stock

Caliber
Movement Automatic

Case
Case material Steel
Case diameter 41 mm
Thickness 11 mm
Water resistance 10 ATM
Crystal Sapphire crystal
Dial Gold

Bracelet/strap
Bracelet material Leather
Bracelet color Brown
Lug width 20 mm

Functions
Chronograph, Date, Tachymeter

Other
Limited Edition, Screw-Down Crown

Description
A Review From Hodinkee:
I have a sort of thesis about Bell & Ross, which is that the company has gone through three distinct incarnations. In the first, it made a fairly wide range of straightforward, technically appealing tool watches, including aviation watches, diver’s watches, and so on (no doubt owing partly to the fact that Sinn was an early manufacturing partner). The most representative watch of this era was probably the Hydromax, which was a relatively slim diver’s watch with an almost brutally straightforward design, which also had an 11,000 meter depth rating (incredible but true) thanks to its silicone oil-filled case. In its second incarnation, Bell & Ross was a design house – specifically, a design house building on the indisputable commercial success of its BR series of cockpit-instrument inspired watches, which were not so much pilot’s watches, as illustrations of pilot’s watches (which is not a knock against them at all; the best of them are excellent examples of design clarity in combination with an unusual design language, which is nothing to sneeze at).
Now, the company is going through a third incarnation. In this one, the company seems to be partly looking back to its own roots from 25 years ago in the making of affordable and attractive tool watches, and also to an era of which it was not directly a part: that of true vintage watches. While vintage inspired designs are hardly a novelty these days, I do think Bell & Ross has done better than usual, in creating vintage-themed watches that don’t look like anyone else’s designs but their own.
As is so often the case with Bell & Ross, there’s a tie-in to aviation and automotive. The name “bellytanker” refers to a type of hot rod that became popular for salt-flats racing and speed record attempts in the years after World War II. These cars were built around the belly tanks, or drop tanks, that were attached to the underside of fighter aircraft in order to provide additional fuel and increase range (a critical part of a fighter aircraft’s mission was often to escort bombers, which often had a much longer range than the fighters that were meant to protect them). Bell & Ross has created its own custom motorcycle and concept car in recent years, as a way of emphasizing the seriousness of its involvement in high performance motorsports and in conjunction with the development of the Bellytanker watches, the company designed and built its own bellytanker hot rod.
The first bellytanker car was built by a man named Bill Burke, who’d been very active in the Southern California hot rodding scene prior to the war, and who served in the South Pacific, where he saw these drop tanks in use. Before the war, a fellow hot rodder named Bob Rufi had built a famous car with a teardrop shape that first ran in 1939, and which inspired the advent of the postwar bellytanker hot rods. Bill Burke’s pioneering bellytanker was built into the 168 gallon drop tank of a P-51 Mustang, and was small, fast, and dangerous – there wasn’t enough room for him to sit inside the car, so he cut a hole in the top of the tank, welded a bicycle seat to the drive shaft housing, and called it a day. His next bellytanker was much larger – built inside a drop tank used on the P-38 Lightning – and the genre became immensely popular as other builders followed suit. Today, bellytanker hot rods are still being built and run at speeds in excess of 300 mph.
Now, the only problem with connections between cars and watches, is that it can and does happen that you end up with a car that is a lot more interesting as a car, than the watch is as a watch. Fortunately that didn’t happen here, and the Bell & Ross Bellytanker watches are quite good looking, with none of the unnecessary details you often find cluttering up motorsports-themed watches. A bellytanker hot rod is about as brutally simplified and stripped of non-essentials as a car can get, and maybe that’s the idea behind the watches as well.
There are two versions of the Bellytanker; the first is a time-and-date model designated BR V1-92. The movement is the BR-CAL.302, which is based on the Sellita SW300-1. The 100 meter water resistant case is 38.5mm in diameter and about 11mm thick overall, however it wears (and looks) much thinner as a lot of the height is the deeply domed sapphire crystal. It’s a very vintage-feeling watch, without being heavy-handed about it; the size will be right in the Goldilocks zone for many vintage watch enthusiasts. Despite its relative simplicity, it’s quite a satisfying watch to wear, with the polished numerals and indices catching the light in a most attractive way. The date’s been nicely integrated as well; the use of black letters and a circular window, in addition to being a welcome break from the usual perfunctory rectangle-at-3:00, echoes the ampersand-and-circle of the Bell & Ross logo.
The chronograph version is just as appealing, and not a whole lot larger. The design is basically the same, but with a two register, 30 minute chronograph, with screw-down pushers and an engraved metal tachymeter bezel. The case is 41mm x 14mm, but as with the BR V1-92, a fair amount of that is the domed sapphire crystal. Water resistance again is 100 meters, and all the things that make the BR V1-92 an unobtrusive, but characterful and pleasant design, are present here as well, including the applied indexes and numerals, and the well thought out design and placement of the date window.
The movement is caliber BR-CAL.301, which is an ETA 2824 base with a chronograph module (Bell & Ross uses this movement in quite a few of its chronographs, by the way, across several different collections). Often with modular chronographs, the construction is given away by the displacement of the crown and pushers towards the caseback, creating an unbalanced appearance from the side. Bell & Ross has gotten around this by using a fairly thick bezel, which allows the crown and pushers to be placed dead center on the case flank; it’s a more complex construction than you generally see in modular chronographs, but it makes for a much more balanced-looking design.
The caseback is sapphire as well and while the ETA 2824 doesn’t offer the most compelling view in watch-dom, I do think in a chronograph, which by its nature is a bit more of a technical animal than a time-and-date watch, it’s a nice thing to have, if just for the atmosphere. BR V2-94 is also limited to 500 pieces. Both the BR V2-94 and the BR V1-92, incidentally, have a tail on the seconds hand that’s a bit of a signature for Bell & Ross: it’s a stylized overhead view of the delta-shaped wing of the widely deployed, highly successful Dassault Mirage fighter.
Just Awesome in Person!! Limited Edition #335/500
BRAND: Bell & Ross
MODEL: BR V2-94 Bellytanker Chronograph Limited Edition #335/500
MOVEMENT: Automatic – Swiss
CASE: Stainless Steel
CROWN: Screw Down
SIZE: 41mm
LUGS: 20mm
DIAL: Gold Dial with Black Chrono subdials
BEZEL: Non-Rotating
CONDITION: Pre-Owned – As-New!
BOXES/PAPERS: Yes/Yes: – Original Box Set, Warranty Card, Bellytanker Limited Edition Patch, etc – everything you see in the pictures!
WATER RESISTANCE: – 100m
STRAP/BRACELET: – Original Bell & Ross Brown Leather strap with signed Stainless Steel Deployment buckle.

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Seller

The Sutor House
Professional dealer | On Chrono24 since 2017
Pompano Beach, United States of America
English
571 watches sold
494 active listings
Pompano Beach, United States of America
English

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