Terry,
That's sort of what Kimber did about 10-12 years ago with the abundance of Swedish Mausers flooding the US. I was able to by high condition Swede's for $69-89 at retail so Kimber must have bought them for less.
They either rebarreled them for the .308 family of cartridges or recontoured existing barrels and removed the military sights for the 6.5x55's they sold. They redid the blot handles and D&T'd for scopes, put them in Ramline synthetic stocks and out the door they went.
The 6.5's with the military barrels went for around $300-350 the rebarreled ones (.243, 7mm-08 &.308) went for a bit more.
I bought one of the 6.5's, I still have it as a backup/loaner rifle, it shoots into an 1-1.5" with that old stiff barrel. I have read that the ones that were rebarreled have experienced setback problem, that action wasn't designed for those pressures.
You rarely see customs built on the M96 Mauser, probably one of the best finished military actions ever and perfectly capable of doing what it was designed for. I have a couple of actions still around here, they can be rebarreled for a few classic chamberings such as the .300 Savage, .35 Remington, .257 Roberts and of course the 6.5x55. Brownells sells pre-threaded barrels for all these.
I also saw other, less known names, doing the same deal as Kimber, they sold at gunshow around here for less than $300 with a bad scope already mounted.
The Kimber reworks were imported by Century Arms, and they contracted to Kimber to rework them and restock them. I have a good friend who worked at Kimber during this "fiasco" and he doesn't speak too highly of what went on during this contract. Lots of "that's close enough" mixing of bolts and parts. Even with the volume done, Kimber still lost their butt doing them for Century.
A humorous note; my friend's driveway is about 1/4 mile long, and the fence along it is made up of old Mauser military stocks tossed out by Kimber! Yes, they did that many!
