Is Para Ordnance still in business?

[ChasMack]

I was looking at some 1911 sites and came across Para. I see their site has not been updated in 3 years. Are they still in business? Buds Gun Shop has very few of their pistols for sale so I was wondering how they are doing. I have heard good and bad about their products....more bad than good.

 

[1KPerDay]

They were bought by Remington/freedom group IIRC. Remington just announced a double stack 1911 type pistol based on the Para frame.

So, no, it would seem they're not in business. I've had two canadian Para Ords and they are great pistols. I wouldn't buy an american Para personally.

 

[98Redline]

^ What he said.

When Para first hit they market they were marketed as a gun to be stripped down and built back up into a competition gun. The frame, slide, and barrel were good quality, but the rest of the parts were barely passable. Plastic triggers and reverse plugs, crap sears and hammers, etc... Properly built, they were great guns and I still have one built by EGW that runs like a sewing machine.
Because of the widebody and 14+1 capacity in the 1911 platform they were quite successful in the IPSC limited class when most competitors were running single stack 1911s. Once USPSA split the limited division and made a dedicated single stack division, their popularity dropped off.
At whatever point they moved from Canada to North Carolina the quality took a serious hit. It was during this time they introduced those horrid LDA (light double action) 1911 pistols and the whole "Hawg" line.
Tolerances were crap, quality was crap, and lots and lots of people had nothing but problems with them. To that they were struggling when Remington/Freedom bought and absorbed them. I suspect based on the new Rem widebody 1911 they bought them for the technology and have moved production to one of their existing locations.

 

[expat_alaska]

Around 1992 I bought a Para-14 aluminum frame kit and put steel parts into it. Throated the barrel and the double stack steel mag ran well with basically whatever I put into it. I was enthralled with a 14-shot .45 on a 1911 style gun.

Fully loaded, it was fine. By the time the mag ran out, the balance of the pistol was completely different and I did not like the change.

Sold it and stayed with my steel 1911 7-shot clone and still have it.

YMMV.

Jim

 

[wally]

They were bought by Remington/freedom group IIRC. Remington just announced a double stack 1911 type pistol based on the Para frame.

So, no, it would seem they're not in business. I've had two canadian Para Ords and they are great pistols. I wouldn't buy an american Para personally.

If you want a "wide-body" 1911, IMHO you should get the RIA 1911-A2. Less expensive and every bit as good as the original Canadian Para pistols. I have both.

The big issue is the magazines -- spring life tends to be rather short and it doesn't take much fouling to cause feed failures (usually bolt over base, aka "nose up" jam). In my experience the 13-round Mec-Gars are far more reliable than are the original Para 14 rounders. The Act-Mag 14-round mags seem about as good as the Meg-Gars and get an extra round.

If you buy it to shoot keep some spare Wolfe Para mag spring on hand. Mine are reliable with fresh Wolfe springs in the mags, although the rounds OAL needs to be a bit shorter than what works in a single stack about 1.23" is about as long as will work, I used to load my single stacks at 1.25 and had to shorten them when I got my first Para.

I shoot my RIA 1911-A2 quite a lot and like it very much, but I do need to futz with the mags more than I'd like. RIA's customer support is excellent, see my thread about how they replaced my rather high round count 1911-A2 barrel at zero cost (beyond a trip to FedEx to drop it off) when the barrel lug failed:
https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/kudos-to-ria-amscore-customer-support.819054/