Let’s face it, once we go down this rabbit hole our requirements, preferences, and tastes change over time. That’s fact 1.
Fact 2 is: the one gun for everything is a unicorn. Do you golf with only one club?
Fact 3: I want something I can grow into. -that one might actually have some merit if you do some research…
A few years back I went down the path of a factory gun as my first ‘precision rifle’. I had fun with it, learned a bunch, but also recognized the short-comings of a proprietary chassis and action with so-so after-market support. My choice of glass was also suspect but I didn’t know any better at the time.
So fast forward a bit, I sold the factory rifle and went semi-custom. But if I had to do it over again with a factory rifle, something that was Rem 700 based would probably be my main choice, do a full send on a good chassis that I can use for my ‘next’ build (MDT, XLR, Foundation, Manners, etc @ $1,200-ish), spend the cash on a TT Diamond trigger ($330-ish), good brake ($200-ish), and drop the coin on a good bipod w/ arca ($300-600 depending on what you get). Then don’t forget about all the accessories that go along with the ridle such as a Kestrel, LRF, Schmedium, rifle case, reloading components (or factory ammo…), ammo novels, arm bands, dope cards, etc.
I’d probably go with a barreled-action chambered in 6.5 CM, then once the barrel is shot out (and hopefully along the way I learned something about shooting and if I wanted to keep doing this) switch out the barrel to whatever caliber tickles my fancy.
So what factory BA is a) Rem 700 based, and b) decent, and c) can change barrels/caliber? Bergara comes to mind.
Then glass. Yeah, we can talk glass all day. But for glass I would stalk the PX and see what pops up in the $2K range. Burris XTR Pro, Vortex Razor Gen 2, Leupold Mark 5….et.al. I bought two scopes that were basically NIB on the PX in the last year and saved some cash. Seems like in the last year there have been quite a few tasty scopes in the $2K range come out. Definitely worth a look before you spend ZCO money. Spend a little more on the glass than the rifle, then when you do upgrade to a semi-custom build, move the scope (and most of the accessories over).