Remington’s Woes Continue

Maybe their rifles were good but I never understood their shotgun following, heavy bulky and clumsy feeling to me, I guess some looked ok?

Their shotguns cheaped out in the 90s, sure an 870 is a meat and potatoes gun and law enforcement probably kept them going for a while.


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I think their downfall was the transition to the "express" type guns. They took a wonderful shotgun in the 870 Wingmaster and made a $400 Express model for the masses that would rust if you looked at it. Ever hold a model 770 rifle? I bought one on clearance at Walmart a few years ago for something like $120. Straight garbage.

They took a product that was viewed as a multi-generational tool and heirloom, and turned it into a cheap commodity that no one wants. The profit margins on some of their later guns had to be tiny. You've got to sell a ton of $400 shotguns to make it worth your time.
 
I think their downfall was the transition to the "express" type guns. They took a wonderful shotgun in the 870 Wingmaster and made a $400 Express model for the masses that would rust if you looked at it. Ever hold a model 770 rifle? I bought one on clearance at Walmart a few years ago for something like $120. Straight garbage.

They took a product that was viewed as a multi-generational tool and heirloom, and turned it into a cheap commodity that no one wants. The profit margins on some of their later guns had to be tiny. You've got to sell a ton of $400 shotguns to make it worth your time.

It’s all about widening the base. Get more people “in the game”. Lowering the barrier to entry. Make customers. Sell sell sell.

And it’s not just about making good cheaper. It’s also about demographics. I literally heard a marketing guru say on an outdoor podcast: “do you know how much untapped market there is in the African-American community?”

It’s all transactional posing under the guise of building a bigger tent - economically or culturally.
 
Maybe their rifles were good but I never understood their shotgun following, heavy bulky and clumsy feeling to me, I guess some looked ok?

Their shotguns cheaped out in the 90s, sure an 870 is a meat and potatoes gun and law enforcement probably kept them going for a while.

An 870 express was my only gun for a number of years. Bird barrel, slug barrel. Was a stretch for my dad to afford back when i started hunter safety. For all the hype about being a no-nonsense reliable work horse, i had better reliability when I replaced it with an Auto loader. Edit for clarity: it always went boom as it was supposed to but found it pretty common for the slide to be really stiff to operate after common 3" steel waterfowl loads or slugs.

So I agree.
 
I don’t think it’s surprising that a company that’s produced such pieces of art as the 887, R51 and the 770 has had trouble with bankruptcy. You don’t bounce back from that. It’s hard to hold any of those and take the company seriously. It’s like if Hi-point started making custom rifle actions, There is gonna be some skepticism.
 
I got a 12 gauge 870 express for my 16th birthday and shot that gun for the next 25 years, I used it for everything that flies: ducks, geese, pheasants, snipe, doves, grouse, turkeys, etc. Don't know the number of days in the field, but well over a thousand birds. I hunted it in salt water marshes to 0 degree F freezeouts.

The ONLY mechanical issue I ever had was the wood finish wore off around year 15 and the wood foreend swelled and wouldn't slide on the magazine tube. At that age, the metal finish was wearing as well, so I sanded the whole thing down and painted it. That was actually a fun project, but I'm no artist. It looks better at 10 yards than 2 feet.

I would probably still be using it today, but when my son needed an upgrade from his 20 gauge single shot, I got a used Winchester SX4 for him. I liked it so much that I bought one for myself!

While I will always hold that gun with a bit of nostalgia, I understand that the quality of the 870 tanked in later years. I never used any Remington rifles.
 
The only Remington rifle I've purchased was missing rifling in the barrel. The daughter bought her boyfriend a Remington shotgun and it fell apart after 6 shots.
They built garbage and deserve to be out of business.
Yet the RM700 is probably on of most cloned actions today...The late '80s early '90s 700s were accurate rifles, triggers were sus...I still have a couple and they will put one round on top another today...they all have timneys in them now.
 
I think their downfall was the transition to the "express" type guns. They took a wonderful shotgun in the 870 Wingmaster and made a $400 Express model for the masses that would rust if you looked at it. Ever hold a model 770 rifle? I bought one on clearance at Walmart a few years ago for something like $120. Straight garbage.
Not sure about that...I have 3 870 Expresses and I beat the living hell out of them and did nothing but normal wipe down after the got wet or snowed on. No more rust than my dads Wingmaster. These are late 90s early 2000s expresses so maybe later ones changed?

Now rifle wise...maybe but its not like the 770 is all they made.
 
Not sure about that...I have 3 870 Expresses and I beat the living hell out of them and did nothing but normal wipe down after the got wet or snowed on. No more rust than my dads Wingmaster. These are late 90s early 2000s expresses so maybe later ones changed?

Now rifle wise...maybe but its not like the 770 is all they made.
I bought a LT Express in 2008 for my now wife. The one with the cheap wood. I swear that thing would rust from taking it out of the safe.

I think the argument is that while they still made some quality models, they diverted a sizeable portion of their resources to also producing garbage. I'd have to imagine their collective profit margins eroded as they replaced a portion of their sales with low margin, cheap product. They likely would have been better off serving a smaller portion of the market with higher margin product with a smaller workforce and lower overhead. This is just my hunch.
 
An 870 express was my only gun for a number of years. Bird barrel, slug barrel. Was a stretch for my dad to afford back when i started hunter safety. For all the hype about being a no-nonsense reliable work horse, i had better reliability when I replaced it with an Auto loader. Edit for clarity: it always went boom as it was supposed to but found it pretty common for the slide to be really stiff to operate after common 3" steel waterfowl loads or slugs.

So I agree.
So, my experience was far different.

My dad bought me a used lefty 870 back in the late 1980s and as much abuse as I put that weapon through, it has NEVER failed never jammed, never so much as bobbled a round and given the "zombie apocalypse" scenario would be the long gun I reach for to this day some 40 years later. It's still as buttery smooth as it was when I used to 'race' autoloaders with it.

I bought my son a lefty 870 express or whatever in the early 2010s, and that gun is a giant turd.
 
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