Once upon a time
At the time both of these revolvers were built Bangor Punta owned S&W and most of Taurus. The companies shared design and info during this time. Most people have never seen one of these Taurus guns. The quality is right there with S&W. They shoot too. Both of these are going hunting this year.
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Bangor Punta bought controlling interest in Taurus in 1962 and Smith and Wesson in 1970. After the purchase they shipped machines from S&W to Brazil as well as product engineers. I have read several accounts of how things went down after that. The S&W equipment remained after B-P sold Taurus in 1973 and the high end revolvers such as the one pictured continued to be built until (depending on which version of the story is true) until 1979 with these revolvers being shipped until Taurus started moving to Miami. The end of the era is marked by the introduction or the 7 shot .357. Pic one of those up and compare it to one of the early ones and the drop in quality is obvious. It is a shame that they were able to build something this good in Brazil and came to the US and turned into junk. It nearly bankrupted them. FYI Bangor Punta was not a foreign company. It was an American company based in Maine.