Remington Model 16
Elegant Autoloader Doomed By
A Proprietary Rimfire Cartridge
Vintage gun, proprietary ammo: The Model 16 is trim,
graceful and functioned flawlessly.
There’s a price to be paid for a serious fetish involving rare and obscure vintage firearms. This won’t come as a surprise to the committed. No shocker here, but the old guns serious collectors lust after usually come with an equally serious price tag. Recently, however, we ran across one with a little something extra above and beyond the price of the gun itself.
Our best 5-shot group at 30 yards was pretty darn close to our point of aim.
However, it’s probably the most expensive rimfire group anyone has ever fired!
First & Last
It was a Remington Model 16 semi-auto, chambered in the deceptively innocuous — and obscure — proprietary caliber of “.22 Remington Automatic.” It’s a trim, attractive little plinker/small game rifle made from 1914 to 1928, according to S.P. Fjestad’s Blue Book of Gun Values. What’s significant is it was Remington’s first .22 autoloader. The designer was C.H. Barnes who was the co-designer of the company’s centerfire bolt action Model 30.
Visual cues? A sleek, uncluttered receiver with an abbreviated bolt knob and minimal projecting controls. It’s a takedown and the most common descriptive term I’ve been able to find for it is “elegant.” It certainly is!
The rifle features a 15-round tubular magazine situated in the buttstock. As a classy touch, it featured a rather discreet Schnabel forend and came in various grades including Standard, Special, Peerless and Premier. Prices of the different grades fluctuate accordingly and range from “I can do this,” through “Do I wanna do this?” to “No way on God’s green earth!”
Our shooting buddy, John Wightman, was fortunate enough to come upon a very nice Standard grade specimen. However, there was a kicker. Finding ammo was difficult and the price reflected it in spades. The price was $2.50 per round, which seems positively horrendous for what’s essentially the equivalent of a .22 Long firing a 45-grain bullet at an advertised 950 fps from the rifle’s 22″ barrel.
But this gripe is irrelevant. What’s out there is “what’s out there,” and a .22 Remington Automatic ammo revival anytime in the future is extremely unlikely. The upshot? Well, since reloading is out of the question, the situation is a simple one to grasp — If you wanna play, you gotta pay!
The cartridge case has a slightly larger diameter than
that of the .22 Long Rifle shown for comparison.
Ammo
Ballistically, the .22 Remington Auto is pretty much a dead ringer for the .22 Winchester Auto. Both were designed for one specific autoloading rifle, Winchester’s being the ultimately unsuccessful Model 1903, although the Winchester outlasted the Remington Model 16 for a couple of years. And no, they are not interchangeable. Both were inferior to the .22 Long Rifle, which — after its 1887 introduction and progressive improvement — began sucking all the air out of the rimfire market. Not enough to preclude the introduction of proprietary oddities like the .22 Remington (or Winchester) Auto, but enough to eventually crush them in the marketplace.
The demise of the Model 16 in 1928 mirrored its proprietary cartridge. By 1922, Remington had introduced the Model 24 chambered in .22 Long Rifle or .22 Short. It too was a takedown featuring a tubular magazine in the stock. Within a few years, it gave way to a beefier variant called the M241 Speedmaster, which lasted until 1952 and was replaced by the very successful M552 Speedmaster. The M552 lasted until 2020 and featured an underbarrel tubular magazine.
I’ve seen a couple of Standard Model 16s in Good to Very Good condition going for between $600 to $800. Total production was just under 18,000 units. As far as the ultra-rare upscale grades go, the folks at Rock Island Auction informed me a factory-engraved high-grade specimen (likely a Peerless) realized a price of $6,900 in 2019. You could expect a Premier grade to top it easily.
The .22 Remington Auto was designed solely for one specific rifle,
as indicated by the “Model 16” on the box.
Pricey Performance
Our range experience with the Standard Model 16 was delightful, even considering the ammo’s undeniable sticker shock. Although the rifle could be had originally with a tang peep sight, our specimen featured a standard open rear.
The trigger, fortunately, was excellent. Very crisp and around 3.5 lbs. — superior in fact to a lot of current semi-auto rimfires. Five-shot groups at 30 yards were impressive, slightly under an inch and just about right for point-of-aim. Our chrono figures were just about 80 fps slower than the listed 950 fps, but considering the age of the ammo, there was little cause for complaint.
The consensus? The rifle would be just about dead-solid perfect as a cottontail gun out to 50 yards and maybe a bit beyond. Like most rifles of its era, range limitations were more a function of the sights than any inherent shortcomings of cartridge or rifle.
Although Remington’s line of tubular magazine .22 semi-auto rifles lasted for well over a century, few had the graceful and distinctive lines of the Model 16. Unfortunately, it’s probably safe to say it was doomed, at least in part by its .22 Remington Auto chambering.
These days, Remington is pretty much out of the rimfire market, which is a pity. Most guys I know of “a certain age” grew up on Remington .22s, most of them handed down for a generation or two. Some of the finest pump, autoloading and bolt-action rimfires ever made came from the Big Green and the Model 16 stands as an intriguing footnote to the company’s legacy.
