OK, you've convinced me
When I bought the 243 I was actually looking for a 6.5x55 but the Bavarian came up for a decent price and it is a really lovely rifle to shoot. The problem, as you state, is the cartridge. Flat shooting and great for hunting, but doesn't seem to have enough oomph out to 500m.
I developed a load with 95gr Tipped Matchkings that, on paper, looked like it would do really well: with a BC of .500 at 3200fps, it was just stable in the 1:10 twist and carried a lot of energy to 500m (almost 1000 ft lbs). But after noticing they weren't having any better effect on the rams than other loads, we covered a steel target with paper and shot it at 500m and couldn't believe what we saw when reached it - the paper had been shredded like it had gone through a paper shredder.
What we figured was, the TMK was so frangible that when it hit it exploded into many shards that shredded the paper, but of course lost all its impact energy in the process. We had better luck with the .430 BC 100gr Sierra SPBT projectlies at 3150fps, but the real surprise was the 87g V-max at almost 3300fps - it hit with authority and this was duplicated on a couple of other rifles (another 243 Sako and a Tikka). We also found what was left of the V-maxes when we inspected the targets and often the base and copper core were still intact, leaving a red (polymer tip) mark inside a good dent on the steel.
The moral of the story is a good expanding bullet seems to increase dwell time (the time it takes to crumple and expand) while focusing most of its energy where it hits - instead of exploding into a million pieces, with each scrap of copper/lead being lost energy as it flies in all directions.
The V-maxes carried the least amount of energy of the three loads to 500m. Go figure!
The laws of physics do not apply to politics.