Colt is not the great firearms company that Samuel Colt founded, and not the one I read about in my pre WW2 books. It is down to a shadow of itself. All due to mismanagement and arrogance.
First time I met a Colt Executive was at Camp Perry, sometime before 2000. They had several tables in one of the Commercial Row buildings just full of AR15’s. Now if you are a competitive shooter, you want to shoot your AR15 all the way back to 600 yards, which then meant 80 SMK’s and 1:8 twist barrels. A 1:9 twist barrel will only shoot up to 69’s and they are too wind sensitive at long range. I asked the Colt Executive the barrel twist of the rifles on the table and I was told they were all 1:9 twist. I asked him why they did not make a 1:8 and was lectured in insulting tones, how Colt had orders for hundreds of thousands of HBar’s with 1:9 twist barrels and that they understood the business and were not going to change. After learning of Colt’s superiority over my business acumen, I just left and never thought of asking the Executive why they had brought so many rifles to Camp Perry to sell to NRA competitors, who could not use those rifles in a match and hope to achieve a good score.