I may have given the impression at times that I'm a Leupold fanboy of sorts, but that's simply a reflection of my own experience. So far, so good.
Given that in general, Leupold has upgraded its products, pretty much throughout the low and middle range, with regard to optics and coatings, etc, it seems unlikely that they would be deliberately letting mechanical quality slip. It's possible that they simply have too many irons in the fire and the sheer number of products make it hard for the assemblers and others to keep pace and do their best work.
It's also a possibility that the bean counters have won the day and decided that it's more cost effective to cut QC and fix the mistakes rather than keep them in house. During my career, I experienced several cycles of management cutting costs and personnel until things went to hell, and then taking credit for fixing the resultant mess. Corporate churn, I guess you might call it. At my age, I don't know how many more scopes I'll be buying, but I have no reservations about switching if they start futzing up. Ask General Motors.
