My apologies if this has been posted before; my Campfire search skills are lacking....
Has anyone had a chance to try one of these out yet? A friend purchased the "Gold Cup" model last Saturday but hasn't had time to shoot it yet. He says the weight and dimensions come very close to his Gold Cup 45. Paid $399 for his, which sounds like a good price if the pistol proves itself well.
Link to Colt's website:
Colt's new .22LR 1911 Made by Walther for Colt. Not sure exactly what is the business arrangement.
Write-ups thus far sound promising. From one article:
"Umarex USA informed us that the following parts are standard 1911 and can be interchanged with parts for any 1911: thumb safety; grip safety; disconnector; hammer and strut; sear; mainspring housing (and internal parts); sear spring; grips and grip screws; magazine catch; trigger; and hammer, sear and mainspring housing retainer pins."
...
"More importantly, it shoots like a dream and produces excellent accuracy, seemingly with almost any ammunition. The range portion of this evaluation was nothing other than pure enjoyment. With many tests, it's a struggle to produce test groups that are representative of what we believe (sometimes for no good reason) to be the pistol's potential. That was not the case with the Colt/Umarex Government 1911 .22LR. The lack of recoil when shooting an all-metal 1911 in .22LR certainly helped with that, but poor accuracy and having to fight the gun so as not to feel that we weren't being "fair" to it can take all the fun out of a day on the firing line. The results with this pistol were, in fact, deceptive. While shooting, I had the distinct impression that the accuracy with the Federal ammunition was significantly worse than any of the others. In my head, I was already composing a paragraph to remind readers that .22 firearms are traditionally regarded as "picky" about ammunition, and I was all set to write that this pistol simply didn't like the Federal load.
Then I got the targets home, discarded the flier out of each group, and measured. The results surprised me; the actual tally for the Federal was not nearly as bad as I had thought. And I felt that the accuracy at 75-feet was as good as or better than any other .22 semi-automatic handgun I have shot. And this was a brand new pistol, being fired straight out of the box, with no preliminary lubrication and no "tuning.""
Link to the above:
ezine.m1911.org