There is no more of a gamble with recent Colts than buying a Wilson or a Baer, or a Springfield, or a Smith. You pay your money and take a chance. A lemon can be found from any maker indeed! There are plenty of people who can attest to needing factory service to make ANY recent production 1911 run right and, fortunately, all of these companies will work to make their guns run right if they don't out of the box.
Nice thing is that you can typically rely on Colts to run right without a bobble of any kind, straight out-of-the-box. And Colt doesn't expect you to spend hundreds of dollars on ammo and hours of potential shooting frustration to "break-in" a 1911 that should have run right straight out-of-the-box in the first place. Colt specializes in making "fighting" guns, not finnicky target guns.
Several of these other makers believe you should have to shoot 1000 rounds or so before their 1911 will run reliably for you. That may be typical and even acceptable with a bullseye competition gun, but it's pure horse-hooey for a guy who wants a fighting 1911.
Colts are fugly?
Now that's humorous... as for looks... well, we all know there's no accounting for taste!
Colt doesn't need me to mention that in the eyes of countless 1911 lovers, nothing will ever match the look of a Colt!
As for reliability, no maker has perfected that! Wilson's stumble and fall just like guns from any maker you can name. Of course, few would doubt that Wilson makes a good quality pistol, in fact no doubt that many Wilsons can actually be as reliable as Colts, given particular ammo and particular magazines... but at a very steep price indeed. This is no slam on Wilsons; while I wouldn't pay the money for one, I wouldn't mind having one either. But it wouldn't be a replacement for any of my Colts.
The fact remains that Colt's have demonstrated that a fine quality production gun, made of good quality parts can be made and sold for a reasonable price that will gobble up whatever you choose to feed it without being fussy. And be quite respectably accurate as well. And fortunately, with a Colt, you don't need to spend DOUBLE the price to obtain a perfectly reliable fighting 1911.
Colt doesn't make much effort to woo and wow with whiz-bang, fru-fru doo dads or gizmos, they just make solid, reliable, affordable fighting 1911's that any gun owner can be proud of and trust his life to.