Why did the Remington 30 disappear?

[epijunkie67]

I was looking on gunbroker and saw several pump action rifles chambered in 30 Remington. In reviewing the round it is basically a rimless 30-30 and can even be reloaded using data for the 30-30, and since it's rimless you can use it in a box magazine. This seems like a real bonus since you could use the round in rifles of multiple configurations.

So why did the 30-30 remain so popular when this round didn't? Or maybe a better question would be, why didn't this round remain as popular as the 30-30?

 

[thatguy]

Pumps and autos as hunting rifles never caught on. The lever gun remains popular after 150 years. It's not that caliber is bad, it's just that the platform wasn't a huge selling success.

 

[dfaugh]

IMHO

The success or failure of many cartridges has alot to do with 2 things:

1)The guns that it is available in

2)Is there a similar cartridge, that has been around for a while, and is firmly entrenched for its niche.

I think the .30 Remington failed on both of these...It wasn't available in very many guns, and the "classic" deer getter at the time was a lever action 30-30, and there were thousands already in use when the .30 Remington was introduced.

I have a Remington Model 8 in .35 Remington (which I believe they also made the same model in .30) that makes more sense to me, as its a step up in power (and $%^%$%^&* recoil!) over the 30-30 or .30 Remington, and its an autoloader which was kinda new and different at the time. If I remember correctly, there were many more of these made in .35 than .32 or .30. Altogether they were never that popular, with something like 35,000 sold over many years.

 

[Jim Watson]

"Why?" is a tough question. "Why not?" is tougher.
But I see a couple of causes.
As dfaugh says, the .30-30 had several years of head start in building a customer base, brand and image recognition.
WW I trained hundreds of thousands of men with bolt action rifles; only the most basic of lever actions hung on, pump action was for shotguns not rifles, and automatics were still newfangled.

I think the Remington automatics and pumps did remarkably well, all things considered. But then there were the Standard Arms combination pump/auto and the Stevens lever action that took the .30 Remington and pretty much sunk without a trace in the sea of more traditional guns.