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I love those old Savage/Valmets: they always work. Just gave my Marine son my 330 12 ga. 28" M/F, but I still have 2 Model 2400 combination guns, a 12x.222 Rem and a 12x.308 Win, a custom-stocked 333 Skeet 12 ga., and an original 12 ga Valmet "Lion" from before Savage started importing them. Like most Finnish arms, they were designed to work in the very coldest weather, and they do.

The "Valmet" top locking system was originally designed in Bohemia (before it was Czechoslovakia), patented in France in 1922 and manufactured in France in the 1920s, then incorporated in the Remington Model 32 in 1932 when the European patent expired. Remington made the models 32 and 3200 on that patent, then Kreighoff started using it after WWII and Valmet in the early 1950s. Savage began importing Valmets in the mid-1960s and stopped in the early 1970s. Then they began making them in Italy (Tikka) and still do, I think.