jt, iCOlt is no more. It was intended to me profitable on govt handouts, when those stopped iColt was shut down. Zilkha is not going to spend his money unless it is profitable. The transitional AR's were an agreement with the old Colt Manufacturing prior to Zilkha puchasing the company out of bankruptcy. It was part of an agreement with the state of Ct. when the state retirement system invested $10 million of the state retirement fund into the company. The stipulation was that Colt would make the AR-15 less offensive and less easy to convert to full auto (non M-16 standard pins), hence the development of the AR-15 Sporter. Of course after 9/14/94 Zilkha bought the company and by that time the configuration for the AR-15 'type' rifle was standardized by the feds and called the Match Target.
Buzz, the revolvers were dropped for financial reasons. You may have bought one, but not many other people did. They are much more labor intensive to build than autos and the return numbers were huge. Colt was buying guns back left and right, especially Anacondas and included many Pythons. If a gun did not meet a level of profitability it was dropped. It was cheaper than attempting to improve the quality. To make the revolvers reach a certain profitablity level, on par with O-model's and SAA's, would have required an improvement in quality and that would necessitate a price hike that would not permit them to be competitive considering what S&W, Ruger, Taurus, and Rossi are selling for. Remember that Colt frames, like S&W, are forged so S&W is the main competitor and S&W had found ways to cut production costs while still maintaining some quality for the last 20 years. There was no conspiracy to not sell concealable guns. The Defender was a best seller, as was the entire XS-series, and was profitable. As a result it was never considered to be discontinued. Colt just never sold many revolvers compared to S&W or Ruger. I don't like Colt revolvers, don't own even one, but I do own a Ruger and more than a dozen S&W's. Like the 2000 and the Double Eagle, they had discontinued the Detective Special and various other models over the years (Cobra, Agent) they just didn't sell well enough. The other concealables, Tek-Nine, Pocket Nine, and Ponys were pulled due to litigation, as the famous Colt letter said, but it was litigation from Kahr over patent infringement over the offset barrel lug. Anyone claiming tht Colt sold out is passing along rumors from a letter that was never authorized, in fact the author was fired over it, and is repeating things they hear in gun shops and the article that was written in the Wall Street Journal. Colt has dropped many guns from production over the last 100+ years, it is a business decision based on profitability, nothing more, nothing less.
