CAR-15: Encyclopedia II - CAR-15 - CAR-15 firearm family

CAR-15 - CAR-15 firearm family

When Colt aquired the AR-15 from Armalite in 1959 it not only became the primary contractor for the pattern, but also proceded to develop an entire family of weapons around the original weapon. Colt's family came under a new name, the Colt Automatic Rifle-15, or CAR-15, and the increasing sales of rifles to the US military increased hopes that they could be induced to purchase all the other members of the family. In the end Colt developed two rifles, two Heavy BARreled rifles (or HBARs), a carbine, an ultra-short carbine, and a survival rifle, all under the common name, CAR-15. However, by the end of the 1960's, the idea of the CAR-15 family would be long gone at Colt, and the name had entered the lexicon for carbine variants of the AR-15/M16 family. To this day, Colt only uses the term CAR-15 to describe civilian semi-automatic variants of its product line.

AR-10, AR-15
M16, M16A1, M16A2, M16A3, M16A4
M4, M4A1 Carbine
Diemaco C7, C8
CAR-15
Colt Commando
Colt M231 FPW
SDM-R, SAM-R
Mark 11 'SWS'
Mark 12 'SPR'
SEAL Recon Rifle
Mark 18 'CQBR'
Ares Shrike
La France M16K

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "CAR-15 firearm family", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki