I hate the swing and handling of the Model 50/59's. To me that alone killed them. Some guns just are an extension of your arm and some are not. I never picked up a 59 that I wanted to shoot and by the time I was buying my first gun the 59 was a dead horse. Heck even the used market was almost zero for them.
The failure to agree with John Browning cost Winchester more than just the A5, which was a huge, but it closed the door to most of John Browning's designs going forward. He had sold them countless designs before, many they never put into production and his A5 design and patent made their attempts to get around his patent very problematic. The Widow maker was one such attempt. In short the failure to grant him a royalty for the A5 cost them millions of dollars and made their rivals much stronger in the end.
Look at it this way. Winchester has a very loyal collector/shooter following who think every thing they every made is worth a premium price. Browning has a equal strong collectors/shooter group. Now if he paid the simple royalty both those groups would be one bigger Winchester group which would dominate. Winchester would have dominated the US gun market for decades and Remington might have stayed the a minor half of the ammo/gun maker group.
