Originally Posted by
John Hearne
I was under the impression, and I can't remember why, that Sig had moved all of its parts acquisition back to the U.S. (Maybe the interview Cohen did with Mas?)
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With the rise of P320, it is suddenly economically viable to bring the small parts manufacture back to the United States. Though I doubt they'll admit it, the efforts to use off-shore MIM parts in a design not created from scratch to use them was a disaster or at least not as profitable as expected. IIRC, Sig always machined the slides and frames state side. It was the small parts that were outsourced. With the P320, the slide is still made state side. If you pull apart the firing control group, there are a lot of stainless steel parts that are not MIM. There are probably a small enough number of small parts and since the future viability of Sig rode on the P320, that they decided to avoid cutting corners. We can certainly argue that the firing control design is overly complex but that is a different discussion.
Sig is still willing to play games to shave a few pennies - that is how I see the issue of the Checkmate magazines versus the Mecgars.
I also wonder how much of the way that Sig handled the drop-safe issues were driven by their lawyers and designed to limit their legal exposure. If you offer a voluntary upgrade, that is arguably different from a mandatory recall. One is indicative of a fundamental design flaw and the other is a polite suggestion. The fact remains, that the P320 passed all of the industry standard drop tests in existence at the time.
*-it is my understanding that Sig never intended to buy Indian sourced parts. They contracted with an Israeli company who had expertise in MIM. The Israeli company also realized they could make a lot more money if they subcontracted the parts out to the Indian company.