Chopard L.U.C collection watches are named for the brand’s founder and represent their highest effort timepieces produced at a special facility in Switzerland. This is often the case with brands who produce luxury watches at various price points, as more high-volume watches are produced at one facility, while more complex and higher-end models are produced at another. aBlogtoWatch visited Chopard’s L.U.C manufacture location, and I have to admit, it is rather impressive. I will further admit that I overlooked a lot of the Chopard L.U.C watches in the past, but in recent years have come to greatly admire the products that Chopard is producing in the L.U.C family.

It would not be correct to say that the Chopard L.U.C Quattro is a “basic” watch, as there are more simple models in the L.U.C family. It would, however, be more accurate to say that the Chopard L.U.C Quattro is the most basic watch to have the Quattro technology. Built on this base movement, other Chopard L.U.C watches also feature complications such as a tourbillon, perpetual calendar, and a complex “orbital” moonphase indicator. Remove those complications, and you have the relatively basic, but certainly not simple Chopard L.U.C Quattro replica watch  with the in-house made caliber 98.01 movement.

Chopard is dangerously close, if not already meeting the finishing standards of many of the brands that seasoned collectors feel help define good finishing in a quality movement. Explaining that is a great place to start when talking about the caliber 98.01-L which dutifully takes up much of the caseback window on the watch. Manually wound, the movement is produced from 223 parts.

The Chopard L.U.C Quattro dial has applied gold Roman numeral hour markers which each gently curve and distinctive hands that are unique to Chopard. The hands are the right length and, thankfully, are given a strip of SuperLumiNova in the center for darkness viewing. While lume isn’t always the most attractive element on a dress watch, I do have to say that the utility of lume should be enough for most brands to take it seriously. We are talking about the technology that more or less killed the minute repeater – so let’s thank Chopard for giving lume a bit more credit as something useful.

Attached to this very masculine and technically impressive formal watch is a thick brown alligator strap with also an alligator lining. The related Chopard L.U.C watches news.Even the strap conveys a sense of traditionalism but also strength. That is a rare combination to get right, and in my opinion, a lot of today’s Chopard L.U.C watches do so rather well.