What is wrong with Colt?

[billt]

I miss my colt cobra, it was stolen in a break in.

Tab you bring up a point I want to start a thread about. I don't want to hi-jack this one.  Bill T.

[Michael Bane]

Colt could well be a study for business books...my understanding is that the machinery for the Python line is now at the bottom of that big Chinese damn, sold off as scrap.

mb

[tekoken]

Colt could well be a study for business books...my understanding is that the machinery for the Python line is now at the bottom of that big Chinese damn, sold off as scrap.

mb

Wow!! That may be one of the saddest things I've ever heard. That should knock a little off our IOU to China.

[Rob10ring]

I never thought MB would make me cry. 
What about the Detective Special?

[warhawke]

Colt has been run by mentally defective slack-jawed dip-shits for better than 30 years! I won't own anything made by them after about 1975 (and it would take a damn good price at that). They use to make some of the finest handguns in the world but they pissed that away trying to compete with the lower end makers and destroyed both their reputations and the finest name in firearms selling garbage. Then they decided to take a note from H&K (i.e. "You suck and we hate you") and only sold to the military, but lacked the bribe money to get the military to buy their junk so now they try and pretend that the leavings from their scrap-metal plant has some value because they are now rare.

Sam Colt would shoot these idiots and piss in the entrance wound, screw them!

[Sponsor]

[fightingquaker13]

Sam Colt would shoot these idiots and piss in the entrance wound, screw them!

Can't disagree with most of that, but I still get a little misty about that Python. Some machines are just machines, but some have soul. If you gave me a thousand dollars and told me to buy a revolver today, it would probably be a Ruger. You won't go wrong. But no Ruger wheel gun I've ever shot, and that's most of them, compared to that Python.
FQ13 who is officially an old fart on this one. Generally, I don't buy the "We don't make them like we used to" line. Here however its true. And more than that its, more a case of "We don't make them like we used to, but we could, and we don't, and I don't understand why".

[CDR]

Colt's AR 15s and Single Action Army Revolvers are still superb, albeit at a high price point.  Their 1911s are not too shabby either.....for example their Gunsite edition.  I would certainly carry that gun any day of the week.

[tombogan03884]

From Warhawk;
"Sam Colt would shoot these idiots and piss in the entrance wound, screw them!"

Don't be so sure, Sam was a shifty SOB, who partly financed his first factory by selling "Snake oil" and administering ether.
The move from Paterson NJ to Hartford was made because he had politically active active relatives in Conn who could help shield him from the legal proceedings of his Creditors and former workers.
One of the primary reasons for the failure of the Paterson venture was Sam's quest for nonexistant Gov contracts at the expense of civilian sales. Had the Mexican war not come along when it did we would be saying "Sam who ?"

[garand4life]

It just seems to me, a complete outsider when it comes to Colt, that S&W did the exact opposite of Colt. Instead of banking on stupid "get rich quick" business models by going almost solely after govt bids S&W capitalized on civilian markets and allowed for the government contracts to come to them. Still seems they are following that model. And the fact that the Colt S&W histories are so closely tied to each other just makes it such a case study in good business decisions. Of course S&W has their share of stupid in their history as well. I could be wrong on that, like I said I'm kind of a newb on the history side of things.

[CJS3]

That "Get Rich Quick" business model served Colt VERY well for the first 75 years of it's life. If it hadn't been for Tsarist Russia buying the S&W No.3 (44 Russian), S&W wouldn't exist today. We wouldn't have the 44 or 357 Magnum. I whole heartily agree about Colt management. If they don't diversify their product line for the civilian market, the only Colt products available for you and me will have "Made in Italy" stamped on them.