After a two-year hiatus, the Winchester Model 70 rifle will return to the American firearms marketplace in June, when Winchester Repeating Arms begins shipping the first of a new generation of Model 70s manufactured at the FNH USA factory in Columbia, South Carolina. The patience of the Model 70’s legion of loyal, long-suffering fans will finally be rewarded.

These new-production, American-made Model 70s embody all of the classic features that made the original Model 70 such a highly regarded product in the first place, plus the best of today’s most advanced engineering quality and manufacturing techniques. For the first time in over a generation, the Model 70 will once again be worthy of the sobriquet by which it was once and for so long known: the “Rifleman’s Rifle.”

This new Model 70 series will initially be available in four versions. The conventionally styled Sporter Deluxe model features a satin-finished walnut stock with cut checkering on fore-end and pistol grip, and a cheekpiece buttstock. The Featherweight Deluxe has the previous Featherweight series’ familiar angled-comb satin-finish no-cheekpiece walnut stock with cut checkering and Schnabel fore-end.

The Extreme Weather SS features a stainless-steel, fluted-barrel action with a textured, matte-surface Bell and Carlson composite stock. Chamberings for these three versions range from .243 Winchester to .300 Winchester Magnum (including three WSM chamberings), depending on specific model.

The fourth, top-of-the-line Super Grade version will be offered only in .30-06 Springfield and .300 Winchester Magnum and will feature a fancy-grade, cut-checkered walnut stock with engraved steel stock crossbolt, contrasting black fore-end tip and pistol grip cap, and a sculpted shadow-line cheekpiece.

All versions feature Pachmayr Decelerator recoil pads for all chamberings. Recommended retail prices run from $999 to $1,199 depending on version and chambering.

So why this rifle, and why now? When Winchester Firearms shut down its New Haven, Connecticut, manufacturing facility in March 2006 (after 140 years of continuous operation), it announced no new plans for continued production of the Winchester Model 70, Winchester Model 94 or other classic firearms manufactured there--and so threw a considerable sector of the rifle-shooting world into something of a tizzy. In retrospect, no one should have been so worried. The New Haven factory had been a millstone around the neck of everyone who had owned it since the end of World War II, due to antiquated manufacturing equipment, non-competitive production costs, erratic quality control and a tough local labor union.

This was a primary reason Olin Corporation shut down its Winchester firearms business in 1981 and sold the factory to the U.S. Repeating Arms Company (a consortium of its former New Haven employees), whom it licensed to continue making guns there under the Winchester label. Nothing really improved, so USRAC itself went bankrupt in 1989 and was taken over by FNH (Fabrique Nationale Herstal), which also owns Browning Arms.

Quality problems with the New Haven production continued, the reputation of New Haven-made guns continued to slip, and so, as the date of expiration of FNH’s license to use the Winchester label approached, FNH decided to finally shut it down.

It’s also clear (now) that FNH already had its plans in place for the next step and was merely making as graceful an exit as possible from the New Haven situation and waiting for the dust to settle. After all, with FNH USA already offering a line of precision long-range tactical rifles based on the classic Model 70 action--made in the USA at its state-of-the-art ISO 9001 firearms factory in South Carolina (see September/October 2007 Rifle Shooter)--it should be no surprise to anybody that barely 18 months later there’s a new FNH/Winchester licensing agreement in place and a whole new generation of commercial sporting-configuration Model 70s ready to roll.