Colt Canada C8 SAS Rifle Gets Technical Review by Chris Bartocci

If you’re interested in AR-15 rifles, Canadian firearms or special-forces weapons, you might enjoy Chris Bartocci’s analysis of a rifle that Colt Canada Corp. developed for Britain’s Special Air Service.

Bartocci, a former employee of Colt Defense LLC of the U.S. and the author of Black Rifle II, reviews the C8 “Special Forces Weapon” design, engineering, materials and manufacturing. He addresses relations between Colt and Kitchener, Ontario-based Diemaco, as Colt Canada was known before its takeover by the U.S. company. He shows a Bravo Company USA Inc. clone available to U.S. civilians.

The 30-minute video was published on Dec. 26.

I’ve watched several of Bartocci’s videos since coming across his YouTube channel a couple weeks ago, enjoying his dry, serious tone and focus on information over entertainment. I’m still a junkie for videos by hickok45, Military Arms Channel, sootch00, James Yeager and Colion Noir.

If you want to learn more about Bartocci, this is a good place to start: Who Is Chris Bartocci?

On developing the SAS rifle:

The SAS actually spent more money on the trials than they did on the actual guns that they bought. They were very specific in what they wanted, and Diemaco was able to give them the exact rifle that they wanted. This probably did burn Colt’s ass a little bit, due to the fact that you don’t get much more of a prestigious contract than the British SAS. They are literally one of the most elite units throughout the world.

On the Colt Canada factory:

I figured I was going to go up there and see the McKenzie brothers sitting in front of Colt Canada saying, “We make guns, eh!” Once I got into that facility and saw what was in there, I was shocked. I found a first-class, first-rate manufacturing facility, completely modernized. In fact, if you were to compare the Diemaco facility to the Colt factory, you would see that Colt was very primitive in their manufacturing techniques and equipment compared to Diemaco.

Diemaco was a excellent engineering centre, they had premium-grade engineers who were excellent at what they did.

On the SA80 rifle, also known by the U.K. military designation L85:

I know there are people out there who do like the SA80s, or L85s. The majority of the people who I spoke to and interviewed in my research, they did not like it. The gun was not considered reliable, and also the accuracy wasn’t up to par with a rifle of this type [the SAS’s Special Forces Weapon].

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