Garcia America Corp was long gone in the mid '70's from any involvement with SAKO when this took place.
A couple friends of mine, one from Ft Worth and the other from Whitewater Kansas who founded the SAKO Collctors Society went to the SAKO plant in Finland right before when I first became the Stoeger rep in the SWest in Fall 1982. They had made several trips to the plant and spent months and months digging thru every stack of leftover old parts in the plant and came up with enough stuff to build 350 rifles in 2 calibers....and footed all the bills themselves.
The new SAKO Managing Director at that time, Matti Packalien and the new World Marketing Director Esa Verho - both great guys who had been brought in from other Nokia operations, agreed to build the guns and since Stoeger had not wanted to participate initially - but tried to later - the SCS arranged for the guns to be shipped to Stoeger at the old 55 Ruta Court S Hackensack NJ warehouse - since SAKO was in a joint venture ownership of Stoeger at this time, stored and delivered them thru their dealer network - which is where I came in to help with the dealer side of this deal in my 5 states - to monitor delivery of the ordered guns thru the appropriate participating FFL.
The 350 guns - 175 of each - had special SR's that matched each other in the 2 calibers 243 & 308 and were initially sold only in matched SR # pairs, but I seem to remember that a very few 308 guns were sold at the end in singles but would not swear to it. I never got involved in the sale or distribution as that was handled thru SCS exclusively. I was offered a pair to buy at the end as part of my SCS Founding Membership package and shoulda jumped on it but kids college bills were in the way. Hope this helps.
Ron
Last edited by verhoositz; 02/16/12.
