I ran into my "hunting journalist" acquaintance on the shooting range this morning. As usual, he had brought along something new (to me) to test.

This time, it was the new Steyr Mannlicher Take-Down. Apparently, deliveries to customers are only just starting here in Europe - or so I was told.



Sorry, I could only locate a website in German (later found an English one - see PS).:

http://www.steyr-mannlicher.com/index.php?id=254

See this page for technical details - some of which I'll talk about below.

http://www.steyr-mannlicher.com/index.php?id=257

Assembly was easy, there was only one (captive) screw holding the barrel (sic! - as opposed to two for the R93 and the Mauser 03). The foreend was a separate piece, and was removed, and replaced with the barrel (also in contrast to most R93s), that makes a pretty compact package for travelling.

Steyr had gone a long way to make the mount a "part of" the barrel, as opposed to a receiver based mount.... The mount base was a long plate fixed on the barrel with screws, stretching across the receiver of the gun. The top of the receiver had been relieved, so you did not notice the separate base when mounted. This was quite a surprising design, but probably aimed at ensuring repeatability over disassembly/assembly. Time will tell how well this works. Mounts looked proprietary, a swing mount dove tail in front and two spring loaded clips to fix the rear end on the mount base. According to the webpage, a Weaver base also seems to be available (I did not see that).

Different caliber groups are available, but require separate bolts - as opposed to just the boltheads for the R93 and M03.

The safety and the bolt system looked to be a copy of the Steyr Mannlicher SBS system.

The gun had a bit of a deep belly because of the detachable magazine, but retained the slim lines of the stock typical to the Steyr Mannlicher "Luxus" models in the past.

Sadly, I was too much in a hurry to try to shoot the rifle, but it was certainly interesting to see this new design.

- mike

P.S. Found an English webpage:

http://www.steyrarms.com/index.php?id=171

Here is the shocking part of the Steyr take down rifle story. We discovered in 1998 that the barrel change was apparently planned as a feature of the Steyr Cooper Scout rifle. Look at an original Scout rifle plastic case, you will find slots in the case for additional barrels and a bolt. When the question was put to the then Steyr importer, they answered affirmative. Think of the market for a Steyr Scout able to switch from .308 to 7mm-08 to .223!! For some reason the gnomes in Austria were not ready to break that ground ten years ago. Too bad. But this new rifle sure is a nice one!!

LLS
Mannlicher Collector

I liked steyr once...like twenty years ago, but now they look like crossbreads of Ruger All Weather and a Blaser.

Is Steyr still in business?

Terry

I have a Steyr M40-A1 pistol that is one of the best polymer pistols that I've ever handled so I'm not anti-Steyr. But, that is one fugly rifle!

Ugly i think it looks just fine.

Interesting design. Thanks for taking the time to post this.

I think Steyr could sell a lot more rifles in the USA if they wanted to.

I thought it was a blaser too at first glance. It is not a thing of beauty in my opinion.

Steyr is still in business, and I totally agree that they could sell a LOT of rifles here in the USA IF they wanted to. Sadly, I am getting vibrations that they are not interested in our market, and I am not sure exactly why. The Steyr factory would never have reopened after WWII if not for the intervention of US General Mark Clark!

LLS

First off I am not knocking anybody but when I saw the question, are Steyr still in business ? My eyes popped !
Steyr,I would think are probably one of the best selling rifles here.Some of my friends own them and refer to them as boringly accurate.
Although I have to confess the plastic stocks do nothing for me.