bsa1917hunter,
Don't recall raving the Zeiss Terras are great scopes, but I was the NRA staffer who wrote the review for AMERICAN RIFLESMAN, saying the only real difference I could find between a Terra 3-9x40 and a Conquest 3-9x40 was the eye relief being shorter at higher magnifications. In every other measureable way the Terra rated the same, whether on my night-time brightness/sharpness chart or the adjustments.
Meopta did make most (not all) of the lenses and parts for the original 3-9x and 3.5-10x Conquests. Don't know if Meopta assembled them or not. Seem to recall they might have been assembled in the U.S., to get around the import duty.
I suspect the reason Zeiss dropped the smaller Conquest centerfire scopes is Meopta's manufacturing in the Czech Republic became more expensive. I visited the country in 1993, not long after they'd split from the USSR, and the economy wasn't the greatest after so many years of communism. But after the split things started getting better, and wages naturally rose. The Conquests were originally meant to compete with Leupold VX-3 prices, and when they couldn't anymore Zeiss probably looked elsewhere. (The bigger Conquests that are still offered are now made in Germany, from what I understand.) Zeiss had already started getting a spotting scope made in Japan a couple years before the Terra riflescopes, so it was natural to look to Asia to hold the price line.
