Rimfire calibres to centrefire. Why not?

Actually, if there were a centerfire equivalent to a .22 long rifle, it would be the culmination of a trend, unless you wanted to be picky an say it would have to be equivalent to a .22 short. Metallic cartridges started out as rimfire, of which there were larger calibers available for a long time. Probably the .44 Henry was the best known. There were other metallic cartridge systems as well, including one that had no primer, but they all failed to be popular for very long after central fire became available.

I have frequently read mention of how unreliable rimfire ammunition is but that was never my experience.
 
The reason you don't know about them was that they were commercial failures.

The latest one I know of was the .22 CCM - Cooper Centerfire Magnum - a centerfire equivalent of .22 WRM. It could be loaded hotter with a solid head case and the strong Cooper action.
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The .22 CCM was the victim of an unfortunate manufacturing failure.
Fiocchi was the only company to produce a large run of .22 CCM ammo, since they were already set up for Velo-Dog production. But... they used a bad lot of alloy when they drew the brass cases. So, they were prone to not just cracking and splitting, but sometimes even crumbling in the hands of the shooter.
A (large) bad lot of cases brought an otherwise good cartridge to premature obsolescence. (Though, that's arguable, since most people consider it to be nothing more than a new name on any number of Maynard cartridges and/or the Velo-Dog.)
 
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