HW 25 was slanted towards the youth market while versions of the HW 30 and HW 50 continued as solid mid-market air rifles. The HW 55 was one of Europe's leading barrel-cocking target rifles. The rather uncommon HW 55T version with its ornate Tyrolean-style stock, usually sporting fine walnut of exceptional grain, has always been a favorite among offhand shooters and collectors. In 1955 they introduced a full size sporting air rifle in the guise of the HW35 which was to become their most successful model and was the first to feature the famous Rekord two stage sporting trigger developed from the target trigger of the HW55T, a trigger design that remains across the range unchanged to this day, the HW35 furthermore boasted a locking barrel catch and an automatic safety located at the rear of the cylinder, the HW35 was such a successful model that despite its relatively modest power output it still remains in the company's range, almost unchanged to this day. An early attempt at magnum power The EL54 was an early attempt (1954) at achieving magnum power in a spring-piston air rifle. It is an HW 35 with an ether injector attached on the right side of the compression chamber tube. A medical ether ampule was inserted into the device and crushed. Each time the rifle was cocked and loaded, a shot of ether was injected into the compression chamber, where the heat of compression ignited it, raising gas pressure in the compression chamber. After Hermann Weihrauch, Jr. died in 1967, a new era in the company began under the leadership of Hans Weihrauch, Sr. (born in 1926 and the father of today's directors Stefan and Hans-Hermann.) The company celebrated 1970 with the introduction of the HW 70 air pistol. The company had begun plans, and first production, of a repeating air pistol before World War II, but the war aborted its regular production. Although pre-war HWZ sales literature shows an illustration of that thirty-shot top-lever spring piston air pistol, only one specimen of that HWZ LP-1 air pistol is now known. It had survived both the war and the Russian occupation by having safely gone overseas as a sales sample to the Hy-Score Arms Company in the USA. The Hy-Score president, Steve Laszlo, had given it to his friend, Robert Beeman. He surprised Hans Sr. and Christel Weihrauch (the husband/wife directors of the new HW