As good as a Kimber? What does that mean? Do you mean, will it run with the reliability for which the M1911A1 is justly famous? I suspect it will.
The original tooling is long gone. The gun is probably built on the M1991A1 tooling, sans the cuts for the S80 firing pin lock. There have been some very critical evaluations of the gun on 1911forum, but those have mostly come from collectors of the original G.I. guns. Most people seem to want a gun that looks G.I., but that can be shot a lot without wearing-out a piece of history. At that, the repro should be great. The only nits that I have to pick, are that the finish on the slide and frame, on the two that I've seen anyway, didn't match (Although G.I. pistols will often appear "mis-matched", because some of the small parts were made by subcontractors, etc., the slide and frame, when delivered, always matched. That's straight from the collector guides). Secondly, the original M1911A1 specifications called for every part to be machined from a forging. Colt, like all other manufacturers, are now making a lot of the parts from conventional and/or MIM castings. On a $500 M1991A1, I can accept some of the cheaper parts, but you'd think a limited-run, $1000 pistol might be closer to what it is supposed to reproduce.
