I think, or at least what I understood, was more the pronoun (as you touched on near the end with mention of gender). Re-reading my post, I see I was unclear in that.

Example.

North American
"Hey, nice benching rig!"
"Yup, she's a beaut."

Russian
"The Red October will be central to our plans to defect."
"Yes, he will need to be run optimally for us to succeed."

To rephrase my question, do Russians "predominantly" use the pronoun "he" to describe "man toys" as outlined in the Red October novel?