About 5 years ago I participated in a customer discussion panel with Colt. At that point the only commercial products they were selling were their semi-auto handguns and M4/AR pattern rifles. In a nutshell, I told them that their rifle line only appealed to people looking for AR pattern rifles (for which the market is saturated), and that their semi-auto line was essentially a lot of variants of the same gun (how many 1911's will the average consumer buy?). If the single action revolvers were being sold, it was in such small numbers that it was hardly worth talking about. For Colt to start regaining ground, I thought that they would need to diversify.
BUT—and I emphasized this point many times—it would be absolutely essential for Colt to produce a quality product. The gun industry has come a long way since Colt made wheel guns, and that Taurus and Ruger were now producing guns that were as good as what S&W and Colt were producing just a few decades prior. At the price point that any Colt would be selling for, it would need to be a superb firearm.
Two years later the Cobra was reintroduced, and my limited experience with that gun suggests that it was a ho-hum "me too" product.
I have not handled one of the new Pythons, but everything I've heard suggests that it's another "me too" product that does absolutely nothing to honor Colt's heritage. And given that there's a myriad of fine revolvers that I can buy in the $1500 to $2000 range, I'm not in a hurry to buy one of these.
I'm really sorry to hear that they dropped the ball on this. Maybe they'll improve it and maybe they won't, but it sounds like Colt, once again, isn't going to light the world on fire with their products.
Mike
