The rifle scope is a seventies vintage Kahles 2x-7x which has an all steel tube. It is fitted with the non-detachable Steyr telescopic sight mounts. 270 Winchester so this is an affordable and very nice deer rifle which will also do very well for long range shots on antelope and wild sheep. This particular rifle is chambered in the common and versatile. But the non-rotating bolt works smoothly so they are a delight to use. These are a nicely made rifle, they are rear locking as so many European rifles of the period were including the Sauer 90 (Colt Sauer) and the Mauser 77. As there really isn’t anything in the rifle that could be attributed to Ritter von Mannlicher or Otto Schönauer the rifle could perhaps have been best called the Steyr Luxus. This was arguably the rifle that Steyr should have created in the beginning when they wanted to replace the classic Mannlicher-Schönauer. The Steyr-Mannlicher Luxus did away with plastic and uses a single column removable magazine. The rotary Schönauer type magazine was replaced with a single column removable magazine which retained the cartridges at the shoulder to protect soft pointed bullets under recoil. The Steyr-Mannlicher Luxus was basically the plastic infested Steyr-Mannlicher with the plastic completely removed and some improved metal bits substituted. Steyr quite quickly introduced a third model rifle, the Steyr-Mannlicher Luxus.
I suspect I was not the only customer who was annoyed at the use of plastic in the Mannlicher-Schönauer M72. You’ll find the Revivaler post on that rifle if you click here. It became a rifle I really liked with it’s smooth controlled feed front locking action and traditional rotary magazine but I was a tad annoyed to find that the magazine follower was made of plastic. Unfortunately I had to order it from overseas without having the chance to physically examine one first. It was a Mannlicher-Schönauer M72 I finished up buying. for those who didn’t want their expensive European rifle to have tacky plastic parts. Steyr had foreseen that there would be people who would react that way so they simultaneously introduced a second model, the Mannlicher-Schönauer M72, which was marketed as the rifle “for those who shun the use of modern materials” i.e. They decided to make extensive use of a “modern material”, i.e. Then Winchester tried to “fix it” by making it more like a Remington and in the process lost customers and damaged their reputation until they went back to the “pre 64” design which made the practical rifle shooters who loved the original controlled feed action happy customers again. As an old friend from Texas has often remarked to me “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Winchester’s Model 70 was not a broken design up until 1964. The seventies were not a great time for firearms quality generally, not if you appreciated the established designs and could see no good reason to change them. Nonetheless Steyr was determined to force a change and to move into making rifles that were cheaper and easier to produce, but to still try to hold on to their reputation for quality.
When Steyr of Austria decided to end production of the classic Mannlicher-Schönauer rifles in 1972 they needed to answer the “now what” question and come up with a rifle that would keep the loyal customer base who really appreciated the Mannlicher-Schönauer rifles and were not necessarily ready for a change.
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