I've never been a fan of the Springfield XD pistol. This is not meant as a slam to the firearm itself, or anyone who owns or prefers it, but rather an in depth look at how the pistol came about. The modern Springfield Armory XD pistol and it's derivatives, are all spin offs of the HS-2000 which was originally designed by Marko Vukovic and produced by I.M. Metals. The gun originally sold for $250.00 most everywhere, and no one wanted it. The gun was what it was, a cheaply made, imported semi auto that used a lot of MIM parts in it's manufacture, which was one of the main reasons they were able to keep it's cost down.
Then Springfield Armory came along and got involved, purchased the rights to manufacture it, jacked up the price $200.00+ dollars to help pay for the multi million dollar advertising blitz that ensued, tossed in $5 worth of cheap, molded plastic "Gear", and the Springfield XD was born. Sales took off, and the rest is history. It soon became the greatest thing to come down the pike since Monday Night Football. Springfield wanted a piece of the market Glock pretty much had the franchise on, and they didn't feel like trying to design a gun from scratch to do it. So they bought the rights to the HS-2000. Not a bad idea from a marketing standpoint if you think about it.
The funny thing is Smith & Wesson had a chance to do exactly what Springfield did from I.M. Metals, but balked on the idea. Ever since then they've been breaking their backs to come up with their own design to compete. Thus far the Sigma with it’s design issues, as well as the M&P with all of it’s slide rusting issues, have proven to be more problematic than profitable.
When the Glock pistol came out in the early 80's, it was scoffed at for the most part. No one really took it seriously, and thought it would last about as long as Madonna. ("Like A Virgin" was at the top of the charts at the time). It did, just not the way most had envisioned. By the time the design took off every gun manufacturer in the country was scurrying to get something on the market to compete. Many of the guns back then were really bad designs that were problem plagued and didn't survive in the marketplace very long. The Springfield XD did, not because of it's design, but rather in spite of it. The Springfield XD pistol has proven how well mass marketing of a given product can work. If you think about it, all it really lacked at the time was Billy Mays trying to sell it on a 1:00 AM Infomercial.
While over the years they have improved it somewhat, it is still based on the original Vukovic / I.M. Metals / HS-2000 design, much like most all 1911's made today are nothing more than copies of John M. Browning's design. The difference is Browning's design was based on gun making genius, rather than nothing more than a fancy ad campaign of a cheaply made gun. In this regard Marko Vukovic, while having designed a very profitable firearm, has a long way to go to catch Mr. Browning. Bill T.
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