Quote Originally Posted by Dave Hoback View Post
Noticed the same thing right away. Does look kinda flimsy. But it’s the CF that is the long part. It’s amazing how this CF can be taken & still be so strong. However, the price is even more unreasonable with the stock not being 100% CF. We’ll see if your prediction comes to fruition. Although, I’m wondering if they don’t just end up dropping the price. After all , the 110 Elite Precision is still going. I thought Savage was crazy when they made it. But people seem to be by buying them.
Here's the thing about Savage... they can have 1,001 different models that are cataloged as "regular production models," but they only make what they get orders for, and they only do production runs once they have orders for X number of that model. Based on the current 2023 Savage catalog there are approximately 500 SKU's for centerfire rifles, 167 SKU's for rimfire rifles, 70 SKU's for shotguns and 45 SKU's for handguns giving a grand total of 782 SKU's. Now I don't know about you, but I've yet to find a gun shop that carries 1/20th of that selection on their shelves, much less all of it. Dealers are going to order what they feel is going to sell the fastest and/or in quantity - which is usually the more standard fair/no gimmick models. As such, distributors do the same as they're not going to order in a bunch of product that their dealers have little to no interest in because they don't think it will sell for whatever reason. So if the distributors aren't ordering it because the dealers aren't ordering it, who's Savage going to get quantity orders from so they'll actually produce some?

Back in the early 2000's Savage offered both a Model 10FP McMillan and a 10FP HS Precision in their Law Enforcement line (as well as a couple stocked with Choate stocks and the standard tupperware stocked model). On average, Savage produced less than 300 of each of the McMillan and HS Precision models per year according to Brian Herrick (Sales VP at that time). This was at a time when Savage's selection was still fairly slim and trim rather than resembling the menu at a Baskin Robin's as it does today. Today we have 5x the number of model variations that are "standard production" models and while their overall sales numbers are up compared to back then I'd feel comfortable betting that they make less than 500-1,000 units of their high dollar specialty models like these and the competition models like the 12 Benchrest, F-Class, F/TR, Long Range Precision or Palma, etc.

The higher the price gets and/or the more specialized the gun is the fewer number of people it's going to appeal to. Throw in the state of the economy and the current interest rates that have everyone watching their spending a lot more closely and I'm betting Savage has seen some noticeable drops in sales volume on these higher ticket models already which makes one question why they're launch two more at considerably high price points for the brand.