the golden bear was howas sako copy in the 60's that they got sued for and stopped production on
the 1500 came after
from another source
Howa presented the Howa Golden Bear bolt action rifle at the Chicago Shot Show in 1967. Approximately 3000 golden bear rifles were exported to U.S.A and passed all the tests at HP White Laboratory, which is one of the world’s most prestigious firearms testing laboratories.
After the introduction of the rifle, Howa won the fame and acceptance in the U.S market.
※Golden Bear rifle
[IMG]
As most Sako enthusiast are aware, the "Golden Bear" was an almost exact copy of the Sako Finnbear. A very few features differed (mainly the Golden Bear's aluminum bottom metal), but they were so close that even the bolts would exchange. The Golden Bear was distributed only for a couple of years in the late 1960's, and I had no idea how many of them were sold until finding this article. All were chambered for .30-06 except for a very small handful on a slightly shorter action which were in .308. Conventional wisdom is that Sako sued Howa for patent infringements which stopped the production and sale of the Golden Bear (While I don't doubt that this is true I've never seen any documentation of this and an email I sent several years ago to Howa got an indignant response that they would never copy anyone's design!)
A little further down in the Howa firearms history is found this on the Model 1500:
1979: Howa started to export Howa Model 1500 which was based on the successful Golden Bear rifle.
※M1500
[IMG]
There are some similarities in the 1500 and the Sako L-series, but they are not close enough to be siblings -- maybe second cousins. Several small parts from the 1500 will interchange with L-series Sakos. IIRC, the first of these were sold under the Smith & Wesson brand (replacing the Husqvarnas which S&W marketed earlier.) They are now marketed as Weatherby Vanguard and under the Howa label itself.
It was gratifying to learn a little more about the scarce Golden Bear and its history. I've owned a couple of them and found that they were of fairly high quality, perhaps not as high as a genuine Sako but a notch above the typical hunting rifle from most American manufacturers.
“If you do not read the newspapers you are uninformed. If you do read the newspapers you are misinformed”. Mark Twain