I've got my Grandfather's Winchester I inherited in 2003. I think it's a re-arsenaled late-war model. It's got the better click adjustable sights, and the bayonet lug sleeve on it. I'm not really up on the nomenclature beyond that. I never took it out to shoot until last year....
On a lark, I brought it along to a bowling pin shoot at my club I was at for my work-hours. We set up a few timed tables of the regulation pins and distances, but on the other end of the berm, we place 20-odd pins on holders at random and folks waiting their turn, or the staff can blast away at them when things are slow.
I knew why people liked the carbine just from holding it, but shooting it was a minor epiphany for sure. "Oh.. so that's why!" etc. Better than .357 magnum ballistics that shot effortlessly, both to hit what you were aiming at, and extremely rapid target acquisition too. And incredibly light recoil to top it off.
Seems like the carbine never really hit a "parity moment" with the commercial market. It kind of went from "too many to bother making more" during the heyday of WWII surplus, (except for the bargain basement Universal...) to being "too expensive to reproduce".