My son manages a local gun store and police supply, and dug out this little gem while taking inventory. Appears to be an Irwindale Arms Inc. (IAI) AutoMag III .30 Carbine from the late 1980s/early 1990s. IAI took over Arcadia Machine & Tool (AMT), the inventors of the AutoMag pistols, in the 1980s. The AutoMag III is a SS single-action semi-auto pistol with a 6.375" bbl. and 8-rd magazine. Other than some quick research I'm not too familiar with them (except for maybe "Dirty Harry's" .44 Magnum AutoMag!)...were they popular? Were they well made and dependable? Seems like a heck of a hand cannon! Recent selling prices range from $1700-$2000 with box and papers. Thoughts or comments?

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Thing is a flame thrower! Fun to shoot at night.

The Automag II were known to be finicky, especially at feeding those long 22WMR cases.

the Automag III that I have seen all functioned well. $1700-2000 more than that gun is worth to me personally but to each their own.

Should be an awesome shooter! I have a Ruger Blackhawk in .30 Carbine...puts out quite the flash and blast. One of these days I'd like to find a nice Marlin Model 62 in .30 Carbine.

If you have long hands and like 1911's you should love the Auto Mag III.

Ivan

I’ve got a 2 and a 5. They are fun and safe. Accurate enough and easy to maintain. The 22 mag prefers heavier bullets. The 50A.E. Will digest everything. Had the 5 the longest and about 400 rounds down range. I’m always looking for the Automags when I go to gun shows and I saw a 3 a few months ago but it was priced close to $3k.so I passed. They have a strong cult following.

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Remain Viable

."were they popular?"

No.

"Were they well made and dependable?"

No.

FYI: Dirty Harry's .44 Automag was a completely different firearm made by a completely different company. AMT's Automags just share the same name.

Nevertheless, the AMT Automag III is a very cool handgun, cooler in my opinion than Dirty Harry's .44 Automag.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

My III shoots fine, the II’s not so much…

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AMT and its successor companies had a reputation for erratic quality control and perhaps design weaknesses-the AMT Backup, e.g. I have had my Hardballer since 1978, always worked fine.

Back in the mid-50s, there was the Kimball locked breech .30 Carbine semi-auto. I remember seeing only one of those, and that was long ago. I think there were only a few hundred of them made. They got beat up quickly by recoil and became unworkable. Not good for sales.

I have a .30 Carbine Blackhawk. I used it for CAS by handloading down to around .32-20 velocity levels and using lead bullets. Far too much noise and muzzle blast to use GI Ball level ammo.

Shooting a handgun in .30 carbine you will soon learn that the .30 carbine is not just a little handgun round as some tout it to be.

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Live long and prosper

During WWII an S&W N-frame was chambered on 30 Carbine. Just one.

I have always loved the gun ... My son in law had one to go along with M-1 Carbine ... Nice little combo .
I just wasn't a big fan of 30-Carbine ... too much for rabbits and too small for deer and hogs ... for me anyways .
My AMT Hardballer ... the first 1911 45 acp in Stainless Steel ... was a winner from the get go ! Loved both the gun and the 45 acp round .
His always shot well , fed - fired and ejected like a Champ ...
that sucker was loud ... but all 30 Carbine handguns are Loud !
I would buy one ... just for the History of it !
Gary

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Certified Cajun
NRA Member

If there was ever a handgun which requires double hearing protection, it is the .30 Carbine. I think that was discovered when the N-Frame revolver prototype was tested. After firing just a few rounds of GI ammo through my Blackhawk, only lighter handloads for me thereafter.

Ditto the spotty QC. Glad your Hardballer was one of the 'good' ones . . . I remember seeing a guy wear out a brand new one in one season of shooting IPSC with it back in the early '80's. To be fair, AMT was one of the early manufacturers to dip their toes in the stainless steel auto market in an attempt to compete with Colt and such as a lower cost alternative. VERY spotty results and irregular metallurgy.
My only experience with the .30 Carbine AMT was a shooting buddy who bought one - it wouldn't run and he sent it back AMT three times as the first two times it seemed to have received the "sunlight" treatment [put it up on a window sill in the sun for a couple of weeks and hope that cures the problem] ; the third time it would run one full magazine only in four or five and he wound up trading it off for something else.
If I was interested in buying one, I'd insist on firing at least a couple of boxes of ammo through it first to function test it for reliability.
As has been stated, these have no commonality with the "Automag" guns by Harry Sanford (cartridge by Lee Jurras) as used in the Dirty Harry flicker.

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Qui plantavit curabit

Shot one of these recently at a bowling pin match. Worked pretty well with factory soft points. No malfunctions whatsoever. The recoil was no worse than my 45 with bowling pin loads but the muzzle flash and report were very impressive. Grip was a little too wide for a really good grip.

I did not own the gun but the guy who had it bought it and never shot it before. He had 7 factory magazines for it. At $300 a pop that is some serious money there.

I had the automag 11 in .22 mag and it ran fine.Sold it just because I have two model 41's and a pre-17.Recently I bought a Automag 111 .30 carbine and took it outdoor shooting and it ran fine with no issues.Daytime so I couldn't see a fireball but a stout recoil.I really enjoyed shooting it and it seems well made.

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Handgunhunter

FUNGUN but it has an achilles heel. Be aware that the Automag III in .30 carbine (for sure) and probably all of this model have a weak HAMMER STRUT.


NEVER I mean NEVER drop the hammer with the slide off the frame. It WILL bend the strut and you will find it binds and becomes 'bashful' with a puny hammer strike. A bent strut will make the weapon unreliable even if it physically does not break. Don't believe it? Do it a couple times and see what happens. <DON'T> Fair Warning!

There just so happens to be an article on the Automag III in the November/December issue of American Handgunner.

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SWCA #590
"Colligo ergo sum"

They are uber loud, huh?

Poulin auctioned off one of these earlier this month: IRWINDALE ARMS INC. AUTOMAG III SEMI AUTO PISTOL - Poulin Auctions

The hammer price was $1,815.

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SWCA #590
"Colligo ergo sum"

Never shot anything in .30 Carbine, but I’ve always heard it was really loud. How does it compare to the .327 Fed Mag? I’ve shot some pretty stout rounds out of a Ruger LCR and an SP-101. Similar round, shorter barrel…has to be close in SPL.

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USS Brewton FF1086
SWCA#3597

Kind-of sort-of half correct.

Both the Auto Mag (two words) that Dirty Harry showcased and the AutoMag III and the others in the later AutoMag series were the brainchildren of the same guy, Harry Sanford.

As for "completely different company...", that's a whole conversation all on it's own. Harry Sanford was a fantastic gun designer and you could argue that he was a natural at marketing, but his luck and decisions at the business operations were infamous, so he ran countless different brand names and multiple companies in multiple locations. The original Auto Mag was produced under different company names itself including Auto Mag, TDE, OMC and maybe even AMT at the end?

Sure, the Dirty Harry pistol and the much later .30 Carbine chambered pistol are absolutely completely different guns, but it's wholly incorrect to suggest these guns have no relation at all.

Glad you brought this up. I think a lot of folks may not realize that the .327 Federal Magnum is really, really, really similar to the .30 Carbine. It's slightly shorter and it has a rim as it was designed as a revolver round.

The diameter isn't exactly the same, the .327 Federal uses the .32 handgun class of bullets (.312") while the .30 Carbine uses the .30cal rifle standard (.308".)

Why they are so similar is the SAAMI standard for max pressure which is 40,000 psi in the .30 Carbine and 45,000 psi in the .327 Federal.

I agree with you that if you had similar barrel lengths to compare, you would find that these two rounds are similarly loud.

The "little" AutoMags were a pretty common sight in those informal "gravel pit" shoots of the 1990s. Regular guys could afford them and ammo wasn't a killer, especially when there was still .30 Carbine milsurp available. Pretty sure this was where I first shot a II and a III. Have never shot the original or the later big bore AutoMags. While fun to shoot, the ergonomics were less than impressive and the cast stainless and plastic grips just had a cheap overall feel to it. If someone wants to pay $2k for one...go right ahead!

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Psalm 27:2

My only experience with AMT was one of those SA hideout .380's, the Backup, I think? Chunky, heavy, and worst of all, unreliable. Ran maybe 85%? It was NOT a replacement for my Walther PPK/s

It went down the road. I had read AMT had issues with metal galling between the slides and frames of some guns. Might have been the issue with mine as the slide always seemed a little "sticky".

Larry