ACR's are now for sale...

[Maverick223]

I think a lot of shooters have wised up to the whole concept(gimmick?) of over-priced plastic rifles filled with promises that may or may not come to fruition.

You guys just don't understand; this is state of the art. What other rifle can you get with an Impact Modified Polymer Lower. Yeah...that's right, they're the only one that does.

The first rifle...ever...that has a polymer lower that they beat the snot out of till it fits. It's like the Century AR...without the mil-spec upper...and with added weight. What's not to love? It may have hit the market...but that ain't the first time it was hit.

 

[Hammerhead6814]

I can't understand what the heck Bushmaster was thinking with this rifle. AR's are cheaper, getting an AR with a Chromed Barrel is cheaper, you can get a 1:7 AND 1:8 AND 1:9 barrel for an AR and STILL be cheaper, and finally you have a wealth of aftermarket parts available.

The ACR has none of those in it's most base form. Your paying $2400 for... what exactly? The right to say "It's not an AR, but it shoots .223!"? You could have done that with a Mini-14 or SU-16 and be even cheaper than buying an AR!

Bushmaster really screwed the pooch here.

EDIT: Think on this, for the price of one ACR you could get an XCR. And still have $1300 to customize it.

 

[dom1104]

the other thing that sort bothers me is the foregrip is .. magpul MOEish.

Not exactly, pimp.

 

[TexasRifleman]

Considering that the rifle has only been shipping for the past week or so, it might not be unreasonable to expect that it might take a little while for more parts to become available.

After all, how long has the SCAR been available? And how many OEM or aftermarket components are available for it? Oh, right.

That's sort of the point isn't it? How long are you willing to wait after buying the rifle if you want to change things? One year? Two? Sometimes it never happens at all.

That's the problem here. There are lots of cool things you can do with the ACR, but not until the aftermarket, or at least Bushmaster, deliver on the pieces to make it happen.

So, until you can actually BUY those parts the ABILITY to make modifications is sort of useless isn't it?

Once those things are available the rifle becomes something different but until then all that stuff is just marketing. It's not bad or good, it's just a fact. If a person wants an ACR in a little different format they simply cannot have that today, so why buy the rifle right now? Why not just wait? So, that's what I am doing, waiting to see how it plays out.

Deliver on barrels of varying length, twist, and caliber, deliver on the ability to buy spare parts, deliver on some aftermarket, and I'm very interested in this rifle.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Hmmm very close to dealer price on the SCAR from what I understand (I could of course have been told incorrectly).

Except that the $2,400 is the price for the basic ACR, where the SCAR is more comparable to the "advanced" ACR in terms of features. Off the top of my head, the SCAR will have the folding/collapsible stock, a quadrail system, actual folding iron sights, a 1:7 cold hammer forged barrel and be about a pound lighter on unloaded weight when compared to the basic ACR.

I think part of the problem is that Bushmaster has not done a very convincing job in justifying the price of the ACR. Until they can point to some hard data to support the price/features difference with competitors, the ACR isn't going to take off - especially when most of the marketing that is out there is pointing to future features that will only be useful at some as-yet-undetermined date.

Quick change barrel? Change it to what? Another 14.5" 1:9 Bushmaster M4 barrel? Caliber conversion? Great. When will I see one and what will it cost given that your basic rifle is already $2,400? Things like that remind me of the M93 stock from Magpul... one of the initial promises of the M93 was that all these accessories were going to be released for it to make it a modular stock. We all know where that went now. I've got no regrets about buying the M93, it was still a good stock; but I'm definitely not going to be plunking down $2,400 on the promise of capabilities that don't exist now.

 

[Coronach]

Bart summed it up nicely. The ACR and the SCAR are, currently, priced fairly closely together, but the SCAR has more features. The ACR promises that it will eventually have additional features, but at what price?

As far as the quick-change barrel and caliber-converstion argument goes, I certainly understand that the ACR cannot be expected to be supplied with a full field of OEM and aftermarket support right away. However, Bushmaster seems to expect that people will pay a premium for the base rifle with zero ACR-specific accessories available, and I suspect that they may be disappointed. We'll see. Compare/contrast this with Robarm and the XCR, which was released with more features than the current ACR, but with a lot of future potential still in development, and guess what? They priced it accordingly. Buy the base rifle now, buy the add-ons later. That's more reasonable than "pay inflated SCAR prices now but get less, and maybe you'll be able to pay us more later to get the full package. Or, maybe you won't. Do you feel lucky?"

The whole quick-change barrel, caliber-conversion capability of the other next-generation rifles (ACR, SCAR, XCR) has not been fully exploited. The XCR is probably the furthest along, and even it is not as developed as it could be. And you know what? As eagerly as I was anticipating the XCR, ACR and SCAR...I don't own one yet. That's not a coincidence. I see no reason to pay through the nose to be an early-adopter/beta-tester when it is not at all clear that any of the companies in question intend to follow through with their sales pitches.

If the ACR functions properly, they come out with the additional features, and the price becomes reasonable, I'll buy one. Until then, it's not worth it.

Mike

 

[ny32182]

The XCR parts are currently out there for 3 calibers (5.56, 6.8, 7.62x39); originally promised were 4, so they are 3/4 of the way to that mark. There are currently 3 in the works for the light model at varying levels of development (6.5Grendel, 5.45x39, 6x45).

If I decided tomorrow I wanted to shoot 6.8, there is a 100% chance that I would buy the XCR barrel and bolt for about $550, rather than drop nearly twice that much for a dedicated, outfitted AR15 upper. The degree to which the modular upper will be used, of course, depends entirely on the user. Assuming the parts do become available.

 

[Coronach]

Yeah, my main issues with the XCR do not revolve around the barrel/caliber issue, actually. I agree that it is the furthest along in that area, FN and Remington/Bushmaster should be taking notes. My concerns with the XCR mostly revolve around the company and the fact that if Alex gets a wild hair up his kiester he could M96 the XCR and let it die. Hopefully there are enough in circulation that if Robarm dropped it (or, perhaps more likely, if Robarm went away) someone else would make parts for it.

Mike

 

[ny32182]

That is a slight concern to me, but then again every proprietary design will get discontinued at some point. If you want assured unlimited parts forever, DI AR15 is the only option. Personally I have 5 of those... I'm guessing most potential buyers of these rifles are in the same boat if not more... so no reason to not branch out a little in my estimation.

Not trying to turn this into an XCR thread, but one other thing about it is that you can currently buy ANY individual part for it from RA. I can and have already bought a small supply of spare parts for it. I don't think you can say the same about the SCAR, even though it is actually currently in production. ACR is probably too early in the game to see how parts availability will work.