I was pretty fortunate to be exposed to a fairly decent variety of auto-loaders when I first started shooting regularly (or maybe I first started shooting regularly because I was fortunate enough to be exposed to a decent variety of 'em
). I've come to the opinion that there are quite a few quality affordable guns out there, but for me the best are the 1911-types and the Hi-Power. I hold some other pistols and they are okay, but when I pick up my Series 80 Colt, it just feels so. . .
so natural . I guess it's like when you meet someone for the first time and after talking for 5 minutes, you feel like you've known the person for years.
My Colt's been 100% reliable so far, but I bought it in spite of all the stories about supposed lack of reliability "out of the box" because I figured that if any problems came up, I could get it fixed, but you can't add ergonomics, pointability, or that trigger-pull into another platform.
And yes, I do like the way those guns look (I guess you can blame Hollywood and the toy gun industry that used to make toys that look like real guns
). But that's secondary (or at least, I think it is. . .
).
Note: It's hard to be original when you talk about classics like the 1911 and the Hi-Power. To put it simply, I heard the hype, tried it out for myself, and found it to be true, at least for me.