“The future is plastic and stainless steel”, according to Anthony Alborough-Tregear, Managing Director of Westley Richards, England’s oldest rifle maker.
From his headquarters in the heart of Birmingham, surrounded by kebab shops and purveyors of shrink-wrap to the automotive industry, Alborough-Tregear has boldly announced that it is time for the “fusty old British Gun Trade” to “wake up and smell the covfeffe”.
Westley Richards built its modern reputation by providing the very highest quality, bespoke hunting rifles made anywhere in the world to captains of industry, the royal families of numerous countries and Elton John, whose personal collection of bejewelled rifles is rivalled only by that of Prince Harry.
“The sad truth is”, says Alborough-Tregear, who has managed the company since 2018, “that modern hunters don’t care about quality anymore, so we are going to embrace mass production and take on continental and American makers, whose products are not very good”. He goes on, “ but they are cheap and they sell well to what the politically incorrect might call rednecks.”
“The good news is, there are a lot of rednecks who would love to have a Westley Richards. Right now they just can’’t afford one.”
Americans can’t really appreciate quality,
"We are going to meet that challenge by making stainless steel rifles with plastic stocks and we will market them at next year’s gun shows in Dallas and Las Vegas. Americans can’t really appreciate quality, they just like good names and low prices. We can deliver both those things."
we are all a bit bored of filing bits of metal
The photographs here show the prototype plastic Westley Richards, which has a special green-coloured stock so that it doesn’t show grass stains when used in the prone position.
Special features include a leatherette butt-pad which hinges upwards to reveal a compartment in which a Mars bar and a small bottle of energy drink can be secured, for emergencies. The weight they add helps counter-balance the rifle to compensate for the lighter weight of plastic, compared to traditional wood.
The new Westley Richards plastic and stainless steel rifles, will be on sale from April 1st 2023 with prices starting at under £500. “I think we can clean up at these prices” said factory foreman Stewart Richards, when asked how the workers felt about the change. “To be honest, we are all a bit bored of filing bits of metal and scratching lines on lumps of wood.” With these cutting edge machines, we just have to press a button and put the kettle on; wait ten minutes and the job’s a good un”.
The future is bright, the future is stainless.
Published by Vintage Guns Ltd on
