CZ Yearbook 2019 /eng

| 69 68 | CZ 550 SAFARI CLASSICS II. In 2017, Česká zbrojovka entered a new phase of their prestigious programme for the manufacture of cutting-edge rifles for the hunting of the Big Five and other heavy game. The new generation is called CZ 550 SAFARI CLASSICS II – a culmination of the combined knowledge and experiences of many in the CZ brand and brought to life through artisan workmanship. In order to tell you all about the luxurious CZ 550 SAFARI CLAS- SICS II rifles, we need to go back in time to the city of Brno in the first half of the 20th cen- tury. The local arms factory had begun to manufacture rifles based on the Mauser system soon after the end of World War 1, but for a long time, it fo- cused on military service mod- els. Although hunting variants were made, they were based on repeating military firearms and regarding volumes, it was purely a side venture. This changed after 1945. At that time, Zbrojovka Brno respond- ed to the change in the mar- ket and quickly redirected their focus on mass production of hunting and sporting firearms which were in great demand not only in Europe but around the world. With the emergence of this new market, the compa- ny not only put more focus on the classic inter-war Z models, but also started the story of the f irst Zbrojovka rifles based on the Mauser system. Modif ica- tions in their design meant that thesemodels weremore favour- able for hunting. What is more, their receiver took into consider- ation the greater requirements for durability when using more powerful cartridges such as the 8×64, 9.3×62 or 5.6×61 vomHofe. I am of course talking about the superbZG47 rifle. This riflemade its first appearance in the Zbro- jovka Brno portfolio not long after the end of WorldWar 2. Un- fortunately, due to a temporary refocus of the Czechoslovakian arms industry on the supply for CZ 550 SAFARI CLASSICS II. the military, the ZG 47 didn’t en- ter serial production until the second half of the 1950s. By that time, the market situation had changed once again and new, more modern cartridges were being introduced. The origi- nal ZG could not meet the re- quirements of the new trends without undergoing extensive design modifications and this situation resulted in the decision to develop new rifles. ZKK rifles The development and manufac- ture of the ZG 47 model was an operation solely in the hands of Zbrojovka Brno. To begin with, it seemed the same would be true for the new ZKK series, finalized in 1963 by the world-renowned designer brothers, Josef and Fran- tišek Koucký. However, around that time, competent authorities decided to concentrate the man- ufacture of Czechoslovakian rifles inwhat today is known as CZ – our factory based in Uherský Brod. The documentation concerning the new rifles was handed over to the Uherský Brod company in 1965 and the production of ZKK 600 and ZKK 601 commenced the following year. In 1967, a third model, the ZKK 602, appeared and it is this model that is of par- ticular interest to us. In all these cases, the designwas amodified version of the tried and tested Mauser system. The individu- al models differed especially in the length of the receiver and bolt. The rifles were manufac- tured in our Uherský Brod fac- tory and exported around the world, marketed under the pop-