In a manner of speaking, the upgrade features of the Bergara 700 clones make them everything a production 700 should be. Most Rem 700’s still shoot phenomenally, but the Bergaras tend to match them, so the other features and the company reputations/legacies become the real deciding factors. For reputation, both can turn out lemons, both can turn out diamonds, and both have tolerance stacking opportunities in between - some folks might act like the Bergara is a custom or blueprinted action, but it’s really just another production action, not immune to manufacturing tolerances. For Legacy, the Remington brand won’t go away, and it’s large enough and worth enough that it will be here as long as firearms are here, and can only really be bought by someone who is savvy enough to be good stewards of the brand. Say what you will about Remington’s QC in recent years, it is following industry average and consumer tolerance trends, but they DO have as good of customer service and support as anyone in the game. If they sell again in the future, that will likely remain true, just as it has for Savage, Winchester, and Remington as they’ve all restructured multiple times. Bergara, on the other hand, doesn’t have that history and an ownership change might mean a tidal shift in quality and/or product support - they’re far more vulnerable to this type of business redirection than Remington.

But all of that really only matters if you need customer customer service support. The Bergara has better design features you’d be spending money to modify into a Rem 700. As long as you’re vetting the rifle NOW, proving out it doesn’t have any manufacturing defects, and fixing NOW what may ail your new rifle, then the distant future doesn’t really matter. You’ll get to enjoy a better extractor design NOW, enjoy a better trigger NOW, enjoy a better stock NOW, and enjoy a great shooting rifle NOW.

Spending over about $800, I don’t bother with factory rifles at all, but between the two, for a working hunting rifle, I’d rather have the Bergara.