Just a couple of things:
1) The 1911 GSR was pre-Cohen. The problems with those were the people at Sigarms thought they could tell Caspian to build them a 1911. They used all Caspian parts, all of which came in out of spec. After he came over, the 1911 line got relaunched with in house slides/frames and mostly in house parts + more features and less money. That fixed 90% of their 1911 problems.
Yes the original GSR was pre-Cohen but you are glossing over the problems that were still around once the production was moved in house. I had a Gen 1 GSR and it was a tack driver. Mine ran reliably but the extractor pin walked out on me and rendered the gun inoperable. I called Sig and asked for a replacement extractor so I could swap it out and they said it had to come back to the factory because it is not a user serviceable part. It is still that way on the current Sig 1911 but they seem to run better. I sent it to them and sold it after I got it back and verified it ran.
It however took a while for the Sig 1911 to be considered reliable. It was not as simple as moving the production of slides and frames in house. Most of the small parts are subcontracted. They do not do MIM in NH but they certainly use a lot of MIM parts. It was and is a perfect case where Sig allowed the buying public to do their QC. The original GSRs sold to the public were test guns when they could not make them run reliably they changed course with no relief to the original beta testing public. This continued with the P250, P238 and even the P320.
2) I don't think there was any way for the P250 to work when it was released no matter what. It was a completely 100% new concept that no one had thought of and should have been what the P320 is now. I'm not sure why they went with a light DAO instead of a striker, but no one's perfect.
It is not the concept part of the P250 that failed it was the gun itself. They could not even get the mag capacity right before they shipped them. They could not pass the ATF pistol trials and had to be removed. Sig actually had the nerve to protest based on the claim the ATF put to much importance on reliability. IMHO the modular part of the pistol which carried over to the P320 is still basically a failure on the commerical level. It just is not as practical as it seems at first glance.
Sig has been outlawed by the German government to export any guns outside of the EU. It's not that they've stopped the Mastershop. They can't bring any over no matter how much they or us want to.
'Export ban' for arms maker SIG Sauer over Colombia guns - BBC News
Yes they have been banned from importing German guns into the US which prompted them to move production of higher end guns like the P210 to the US. The Legion line is there to fill the gap. Let me clarify. When I referred to Sig moving all its production to the US I am referring to Sig Sauer, Inc not SIG Sauer GmbH. I should have clarified. I did allude to the fact Sig Sauer, Inc can no longer import guns Mastershop guns from Germany but I did not give the details. Thanks for filling them in.
I think the majority of Sig's QC issues during the Cohen era was the Exeter, NH plant was originally built to just build P229s and slides for the P series with German built frames. Eventually, that same Exeter plant became responsible for everything. In the last few years, they've built a much larger facility that's capable of the task and can be expanded far easier than the older plant they started with (I think that's turned into the Sig Academy, but someone would have to check into that).
And IMHO you would be wrong. One of the biggest source of QC problems was their heavy adopting of cost cutting MIM in the beginning of the Cohen era. The parts were cheap ****. They were so bad even Bruce Gray has made several comments about their poor quality. He will not even work on a P238 because of the inherent issues with the design and the inability to ensure long term reliability. At one time he was developing a line of steel tool replacement parts for the P series because there were so many know issues with the basic configurations. This had nothing to do with assembly it had everything to do with production. MIM used by Sig today is much better so much that basic steel tool replacement P series parts were never put into production by Gray Guns. It took a lot of parts failures for Sig to make this change.
Another example of bad QC, in Sigs quest for economy of scale they went to all stainless steel slides. There were known issues with the extractors on the P220STs but Sig moved all P220s to milled stainless steel slides anyway, because the tooling for the carbon steel slides in Germany was nearing end of life. They did not fix or redesign the extractor. Tons of failures. No recall they fixed them one at a time often more than once on the same pistol. It did not get fixed until the moved to the internal extractor.
The OC on the P250 was horrible when they first came out. The first 3 gens were basically beta testing on the buying public. IT is a reliable pistol these days but the damage was already done. Again I believe if not for the parts commonality with the new P320 Sig would have dumped the P250 by now. The same was true for the P238. Sig rushed both guns to market before they were ready yet never acknowledged the products has systemic problems which were corrected in later versions. using the same exact playbook once the issues were brought to light Sig fixed the P238 enough to keep them moving off the shelf. Its unique place in the market kept people buying them IMHO but the early days were rough.
They did the same thing on the rifle side. The botched the 556. The Sig556R and the 556Xi have never been reliable. With the new MPX has already had 2 versions which are not fully compatible. The list goes on and on.
It was not just production capacity that caused problems for Sig. It is their overall QC and their overall design and beta testing that has caused them a fair amount of problems.
Even among Sig enthusiasts the smart ones wait a year or 2 to touch one of their new designs because they have been burned in the past. Sigs MIM is better these days. They are in a process of change IMHO. They are still good guns. Even in their worst days the chances of getting a good P series gun was extremely high if you knew which problem children to avoid. Their new designs although initiative have almost all had significant teething problems. To me that means they still have QC issues. YMMV
