Someone once told me that for every Ford Torino there were a dozen Taurus. The reality is closer to four-to-one, but the intent remains: pedestrian will always outnumber performance. The adage applies to Marlin as well, their most popular rifle by volume wasn’t the 1893, the 39, or the 336. It was the Model 60. A no-frills, birch-stocked rifle, the Model 60 was Marlin’s most prolifically produced rifle by a runaway margin, selling over 12-million units until the model was discontinued when Ruger purchased the brand in 2021.
Boys’ Life Magazine, December 1981
The Model 60 is a blowback operated rifle that feeds from an underbarrel magazine. Originally introduced as a more budget-friendly variant of the Model 99, the 60 would end up outliving (and outselling) the 99. During it’s long run, it was sold with birch, walnut, laminated, and synthetic stocks, with some stocks including pressed ‘checkering’ or outdoor patterns. Magazine capacity varied from 22 rounds to as few as 10 for certain state-specific configurations.
The Model 60 was sold under a variety of names, perhaps the most common being under the Glenfield banner.
J.C. Penney Catalog, 1970
Glenfield was not, as some have suggested, a separate company procured by Marlin; rather, it was a subsidiary created by Frank Kenna for department branded products to better enable market testing. Glenfield was, most commonly, sold through J.C. Penney department stores until they shifted away from sporting goods in the early 1980s. Unlike many other brands, Marlin maintained the model nomenclature for the Model 60 across its branding, with a few exceptions.
A treatise on the variants and complete history of the Model 60 would comprise volumes – a more concise version is that the Model 60 served as a basis for nearly every special-edition, limited-release, and store branded rifle Marlin produced, and over 60 variants and versions are known to exist. Marlin incorporated a number of updates over the production run without annotating the change with a new model number designation. This results in a variety of different specific operating configurations with bolts, feed throats, lifters, and other small parts evolving over the life of the rifle.
While the Model 60 isn’t particularly complicated, it does require a detailed examination when replacing parts to ensure the rifle is safe to operate, and parts may need to be modified to fit properly. While the factory supply of parts has dried up, components remain widely available on the secondary market, and a healthy cottage industry is emerging to enable owners to continue to operate their rifles safely.
