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Maybe I should say, "kids these days," too.
On page 38 of the June 2024 issue of Shooting Illustrated there's an article talking about guns that were, "released to much fanfare and market curiosity, only to crash and burn and end up in the dustbin of history."
It covers the Hudson H9, Remington R51 and CCF Raceframes.
There's nothing wrong with this list, except being at least one too short.
Where's the Colt 2000?
Virtually everything you could say about the R51 applies to the 2000. Most especially the gunwriters getting examples that worked great and production models sucking harder than Kamala Harris vying for a promotion.
Perhaps the author is a little too young to remember?
Did the list include the Bren 10?
ReplyDeleteI think they could do a monthly series on failures to launch.
DeleteThen there's outright weirdos like the H&K G11 with the 4mm rounds. Or the Gyrojets. Or the FN2000, a bullpup 5.56mm rifle with forward ejection and took standard NATO mags.
ReplyDeleteWhat would be interesting would be a series on once-famous now-lost forever guns and calibers.
One might even call it "Forgetten Weapons"! GRIN
Delete"do you have any 8mm French Ordnance?"
DeleteIan et al are far more informative and entertaining than any article I ever read in any of the NRA rags that I had coming when wife and I were members.
DeleteThank God that Wayne's overgrasping chased us away...
I think you need to further classify the flops as failure of marketing versus failure of execution. My recollection is the Hudson H9 people did an Osborne by announcing a new model prematurely and cratering sales of the current model. The R51 was a larger caliber version of a successful John Pedersen design let down by atrocious quality and reliability from Cerberus era Remington.
ReplyDeleteThe third classification would be bad design, remember the Taurus Curve? Boberg would also fit, the mechanism is interesting but the marginal performance gain of a slightly longer barrel was offset by ammunition sensitivity and concomitant reliability issues.