If you must have a new one, I suggest a Marlin, but only if you can give it a good going over in person first. The tang safeties on current Miroku Winchesters drive me nuts; totally unnecessary (but placed there at the insistence of the parent company, Browning, possibly because a safety is required in Europe). The Marlin safety is easy to ignore, and there's still a half-cock.
An couple of .30/30 alternatives are the Henry single-shot and the Ruger Number 1s. Both have irons, and look kinda traditional, and are easily scoped when you get too old to shoot without glass. An added bennie is that pointy bullets are safe in them. I have a Henry in .308 on its way, and based on one example I saw recently, they're nicely done, with good walnut, and the fit and finish were not what you would expect on a $400 gun. Not a fan of their goofy-looking lever guns at all, BTW; just not to my taste.
