What happened with the SA35 and Prodigy?
Both were not ready for market - released early to meet sales / marketing demands. Engineers quickly fixed the issues, but both had rough starts.
Does SA ever do anything original anymore?
Never have, never will until they actually start making guns themselves instead of slapping roll marks on someone else's creation.
Couple of things:
I was surprised to learn that the Echelon is a design from Croatia. I don't know why that seems odd. They make a lot of firearms in that region, but it just seems odd to partner up with SA. Seems like they took a lot of good ideas from Sig and tried to improve on that.
I laugh when I see all the "good" manufacturers versus "bad" ones. For the most part, they make guns and they have to deal with politics to stay in business. S&W was run by idiots at the time they got all "anti-2A", and they paid the price for that. That management is long gone. Ruger thought they could distance themselves from the "Black Rifle" bans, but that was foolish. None of the anti-gun laws are about public safety or anything else they claim. Not one of the gun manufacturers, suppliers, vendors, distributors, or advertisers cares one bit about you. It's not personal; there's no reason to believe that anyone else cares about you. They make good guns, or they don't. Stop trying to give them personalities.
As for trashing SA, in my experience they make pretty good firearms. There are certainly manufacturers that I'd avoid (Taurus), but SA seems to make decent firearms and I've never heard of people having problems with their service folks (unlike Taurus).
Having said that, I'm not going to be lining up to buy the new Echelon. I don't want to have to get new magazines. (I realized a few years ago that one of the biggest reasons I avoid buying a new gun is that I don't want to have to get new magazines. I'd rather have a bunch of different 1911s that can share mags rather than having a cool new pistol that forces me to search for magazine sales.)
Springfield has been partnered with HS Produkt in Croatia since 2001 when they struck the deal to rebrand the HS 2000 pistol as the Springfield XD. They tacked $100 onto the price tag, added a light rail to the original, and called it the eXtreme Duty pistol with that lame ass late 90's / early 2000's faux edgyness that everything has to be EXTREME.
If its a striker fired pistol with an SA rollmark - its made by HS Produkt.
They must have had an agreement NOT to release the gun under the HS brand until it was released in the USA under the Springfield brand with the Echelon - as their website still hadn't showed a new model as of launch day the other day for Springfield. They do a decent business in Europe as a military contractor and in countries that allow citizens to have pistols or "non sporting" rifles.