[Jim March]

I have a theory. This is really about the Heritage contract and relationship with Pietta.

Heritage is the only source of a Pietta centerfire SAA-ish gun with a transfer bar safety. The "Heritage Big Bore" is a Pietta made in Italy that is finished stateside. It is therefore functionally the same gun as the Gaucho except without the Gaucho's horrific QC issues that doomed it.

Taurus can take over the contract, bring Pietta parts stateside to either the Taurus plant in Miami or the existing Heritage plant and sell it as the "Gaucho II" or if they're smart, pick a new name entirely. The gun would have nothing to do with Brazil...and might even give the Ruger NewVaq a run for the money in terms of price/performance/looks.

Taurus could do this while leaving the Heritage small-bore gun line alone...or put another way, leave Heritage to deal with what they do best.

Pietta should be all over this because they'll get access to the Taurus marketing team. Pietta's QC is actually a bit better than most Ubertis by all accounts, but they don't have much of a marketing team and zero stateside presence. Despite that they're now selling some models through Cimarron on top of the existing contract with import house EMF. But neither of those cover transfer-bar based guns.

I'm assuming that Heritage had some sort of exclusive deal that Taurus has now bought rights to...good bet, as otherwise EMF (Pietta's biggest US importer) would have long since had transfer-bar variants from Pietta.

With luck we'll see more variants of the Pietta transfer-bar guns, such as Thunderer-grip models and Pietta's answer to the Ruger SBH/Bisley grip frames known as the "Alchemista" (after Pietta CEO's European SASS handle - the guy has big hands).