M1a’s are expensive
Because this rifle was expensive.
I have a gun designer friend, we have talked about Garands/M1a’s. John Garand’s design requires special tooling and has un needed machining contours. My friend comment “hey, John Garand was a tool and die machinist”.
The Garand was designed in a period where low cost production was hardly addressed. It took WW2 to make leaders realize that designs needed to take into account cheap and rapid production. The Germans went whole hog designing the HK 91 based on the lessons they learned. After losing several German Armies, complete with all equipment, the Germans had a real hard time getting enough rifles to their new recruits. They decided that building an expensive rifle that lasted 100 years did not make military sense when the soldier carrying the thing had a life expectancy of 9 months. What made more sense was producing lots of rifles. I heard some ridiculously low touch labor requirement for HK 91’s. You can look at them, sheet metal receiver, sheet metal magazines, stamped trigger parts, pressed to fit barrel, I don’t think they designed that rifle to be rebuilt. It just makes more military sense to build them faster.
Incidentally, my friend told me the FAL receiver is even more expensive to make than a Garand/M1a. Which explains the $3000 (adjusted for inflation) a FN FAL was going for in the 70’s.
Springfield Armory was a hidebound production engineer dominated organization. Springfield Armory was familiar with Garands, was tooled up for Garands, the powers that lead the organization did not want something different. Soldiers, if you ever worked with Soldiers, are even more resistant to change than production engineers. Soldiers like what they have, want something better but only a little different and totally reject revolutionary change. Given the votes and attitudes at the time, small wonder the M14 was adopted.
I got my Distinguished with the M1a, love the rifle, but I know it is not a cheap thing.
It is still my favorite 308 semi auto.
Still, the cost of American firearms is peanuts compared to Swiss.
I was told, and I believe that K31 bolts are totally interchangeable across all 800,000 rifles and thirty years of production. This is nuts.
Swiss rifles are built like Swiss watches.
And they are not cheap.