Was the quality of Colt in the eighties bad?

Bought a Series 70 Colt Combat Commander,

NIB, got home and racked the slide back and GLARED at the spring plunger housing flopped on the table.
Looked at the box the proudly proclaimed: "Proudly made by the UAW."

Local smith replace and staked in for $40, because of someone could do their job.

As said above the SAA were basically flawless.
 
The late 70's and early 80's were high inflationary times. There was tremendous pressure to keep costs down. I bought a house in 1981 and many were paying 18-19% interest on home loans. Then they had the problem with labor. Everything was working against Colt (and sometimes they seemed to make some odd decisions). Law enforcement were transitioning to semi-autos things weren't so great for revolver manufacturers. Eventually by 1986 most of the old style DA revolvers were discontinued, but the Python and a few others remained. Colt had an ownership change in 1990 after declaring Chapter 11 in 1989 (as I recall).
 
I saw some pretty bad Colts in the 80's and I actually think that had a lot to do with Kimber making such a quick rise to stardom...that and the fact that the early Kimbers were great guns and a great value.
 
I bought a NIB bright stainless King Cobra that was extremely out of time out of the box. It was so bad it wouldn't fire during slow DA pulls.
 
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