Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors And Now For Something Different - Spain!

Got some figure to that wood.

Okay.. To the best of our knowledge...

Not all the details are known, including exactly when it began or ended. But apparently it was in or shortly after 1987 that Ron Coburn at Savage wanted to continue the 99, but needed to bring the prices down. There was too much labor involved to make it profitable to continue them, and Savage had just gone through a bankruptcy.

So he contracted with Llama to create new methods of creating the large parts of the 99 through investment casting and more modern CNC methods. Llama did this. All the smaller parts, barrels and stocks continued to be made in the USA, but the receiver and lever and probably a couple other parts were made in Spain. The guns were assembled in Spain. About 200 US made receivers were sent to Spain as a control group, presumably they were returned and finished in the US at some point (might explain a 1987 99C I have with a blued lever).

So somewhere between 700 and 1200 rifles were made in Spain up through about 1994, at which time Savage brought all manufacturing back to the US - but continued to use the investment casting and CNC methods designed by Llama.

The Spanish guns do have a reputation for low quality.. but having one, and having had half a dozen 99C's from the 90's, I don't see any difference. I haven't shot them, but appearance wise they look the same. It might be that Savage cleaned up/fixed the Spanish 99's before they shipped them, but the end result looks the same.

Almost all Spanish 99C's were in 308, though at least one 243 is known of. Catalogs listed them as available in 308 and 243, though most of the years they stated the 99 was available only in limited quantities.