Remington at the time with the 700 was building a pretty nice reliable and accurate rifle, if anything a little too shiny. Winchester' post-64 M70 suffered the criticisms of guys who were used to the grand old pre-64 M70. Truth be told the new ones shot as good and served their owners well- the complaints were mostly cosmetic in nature, and virtually the same can be said of Savage. If anything everybody slid into a Dark Age of Aesthetics during the 60's-70's including Savage, and not just guns. Take a good hard look at the crap churned out by Detroit during that time period- good powerful lusty V-8's, sure, but stuck into bloated softly sprung behemoths.
The Postwar boom was about over. The prewar and wartime technology that made it possible was getting long in the tooth and The Greatest Generation were finding their first gray hairs and feeling the first twinges of arthritis. We Baby Boomers were stepping up and frankly our tastes sucked- take a good look at the clothes we wore- and everything we did was in protest of the sensibilities of our parents, usually for no better reason than to force change for change's sake. Aesthetic principles that had matured over decades became passe- out with the old in with the new, be different, man!- and our rifles followed suit. White line spacers, Monte Carlo stocks, flashy finishes- man if your company didn't provide that you were left in the dust.
I'm not quite sure how we grew out of it and returned to "classic" sensibilities, but I'm glad we did. Perhaps we woke up to the fact that something had to pay the price for rapid growth and head long change for change's sake, and that something was aesthetics.
Savage's post-mil's strike that chord of aesthetic poverty that taints my view of the whole era in general. Nothing against the guns, per se, they work and shoot ok. I'll stick with the older stuff thank you very much. But then again, I wear Woolrich plaid instead of Mossy Oak camo too.
