FN re-enters the P-35 game

[Tamara]

You can tweak and market a turd but that doesn’t make it competitive.

How many rounds have you run through how many new High Powers?

I'm curious as to how much weight I should give your opinion on the gun.

[TGS]

The BHP is the standard sidearm of the Indian Army. Likely due to British influence but AFAIK while they used BHPs, the British never actually made any BHPs. I wonder if the Indians simply made unauthorized copies the way they did with the inch pattern FAL.

So, by "British" I'm referring to the Empire as it stood when the Hi-Power was produced by Inglis prior to full Canadian independence. India got the Hi-Power tooling from Inglis.

My comment was me being unsure about whether they bought the tooling after the fact, or whether Inglis had already stood up the tooling in India as part of the war effort and they simply inherited it like the Lee-Enfield and Webley tooling.

[HCM]

How many rounds have you run through how many new High Powers?

I'm curious as to how much weight I should give your opinion on the gun.

50 was enough though for reference I normally shoot about 15k rounds of pistol a year. Back to the new HP. It works, which is a great improvement over ever other FN pistols which came in between the original P35 and the 509 (which is good), but it’s meh.

FN made something neither fish nor fowl. Not appealing to the traditional crowd (not a “real HP), the wonder blaster 2000 crowd (no rail or optics cut), or the EDC crowd (too heavy).

Not the first time FN had been their own worst enemy, it won’t be the last.

[HCM]

So, by "British" I'm referring to the Empire as it stood when the Hi-Power was produced by Inglis prior to full Canadian independence. India got the Hi-Power tooling from Inglis.

My comment was me being unsure about whether they bought the tooling after the fact, or whether Inglis had already stood up the tooling in India as part of the war effort and they simply inherited it like the Lee-Enfield and Webley tooling.

After. The Indians apparently licensed HP production at Ishapore via Inglis after both WWII and Indian independence.

[Thy.Will.Be.Done]

1. No light rail
2. Not optic ready

It’s 2023, not 1993. There’s really no excuse for manufacturers to ignore those two things.

That is really difficult to swallow, somehow missed the light rail. The optic ready part is a pain but there is always milling if the internals allow it.

[SoCalDep]

Everyone has personal preferences. The P35 is a classic design and there will always be those traditionalists who don't want to change. On the other hand, sometimes the new is a way to keep the old alive. I know on my department the 1911 was quickly fading away and even I couldn't justify it (though it's my favorite) for modern LE use. Enter the Staccato... It reinvigorated single action 1911-based designs and has become very popular. I now have several and I'll be picking up my Springfield Prodigy later this week. I'm also having fun with my 1911s more, shooting them and carrying them off-duty on occasion.

The first centerfire handgun I shot was a Browning Hi Power. I've always loved the feel of the grip and I think it's a very slick looking pistol. With single-action pistols gaining traction thanks to the Staccato, the P35 is in a position to take advantage of that. It needs to be done right and it still may fail, but I'm enough of a Hi-Power fan that if FN introduced their new model with a rail and an optic cut I'd buy it in a second. Without the optic/rail I'd just stick with the more traditional design.

People are already playing lego with Brownings, Springfields, Girsans, compact Girsans, and Girsan is coming out with their Hi Power with beavertail, rail, and optic. I'd love to see options for the "platform" to continue to adapt to modern times and allow new shooters to discover the history of it.

[Lon]

I understand that some folks have a point of view that biases them to think that every handgun should primarily be designed to be first and foremost relevant to the needs of the Everytown PD SWAT team, but in fact only a tiny minority of the handguns sold in this country wind up in a Safariland SLS wearing an RMR and a U-boat.

Some, for instance, might be intended for competition, like IDPA's Enhanced Service Pistol division, say, or maybe just for fun.

Maybe if they sell enough, they'll bring out a version with a rail and a dot cut, but considering how completely assblasted the Fudds are about how the gun already differs from grandpa's GP35, I'm not super hopeful. If they came out with a railed MRDS-ready version, all the geezers would hate it because it was REALLY different from the classic Hi-Power, and the Primary & Secondary nutriders would hate it because it isn't a Glock or a Stack-A-Toe and FN hasn't signed up a bunch of tacticool influencers to call it The Next Great Fighting Pistol.

I get where you’re coming from. My answer was primarily about why this wouldn’t make a good duty pistol. I’ll be the first to admit that not every gun needs to be made or designed so that it can be a duty pistol. I, for one, don’t think that single action pistols have any business in the duty holsters of 99.9% of the cops out there. Decades before Staccato was a thing, my first agency bought SV 2011s (w/ custom Bomar adjustable night sights, but no light rail) for the SWAT guys. They were really nice guns. Those SWAT guys shot way more than most cops, but I still didn’t think 90% of those guys should be running them on duty. The guy who ordered them was a USPSA shooter and realistically, he was the only guy on SWAT who should have had one (me and the other 2 guys who normally competed w/2011s weren’t on SWAT).

But I think it would be smart to manufacture full size pistols today that appeal to the broadest number of buyers.

When it comes to non-LE sales, I think FN shot themselves in the foot from the very beginning by not having a light rail or optic cut. The diehard purists were never going to jump behind this pistol. Deviate from JMB’s original design? Heresy!!! So who else is gonna buy it? By eliminating the light rail and optic cut they alienated a good portion of the gun buying market. The light rail for me is a non-issue for guns that aren’t duty holster bound. Nor do I think that most people need to be rocking a WML on a CCW/off-duty pistol. WML on a night stand gun? Sure. But a lot of people disagree and won’t buy a full sized pistol that doesn’t have a light rail. And the popularity of red dots on pistols is just gonna keep going up, not down. So why eliminate those potential buyers right off the bat?

Take me for example, I’d never think about carrying this on duty. But I would consider it for off duty and/or competition. I absolutely love the Hi-Power. First real pistol I ever fired. And I would be extremely interested in this if it was optic ready. Same thing goes with the Dan Wesson DWX. I really want one, but if they don’t make an optic ready version I’ll never buy one. Not for that price tag.

[Tokarev]

...it would be smart to manufacture full size pistols today that appeal to the broadest number of buyers....I think FN shot themselves in the foot from the very beginning by not having a light rail or optic cut. The diehard purists were never going to jump behind...and the popularity of red dots on pistols is just gonna keep going up...

Nicely done.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

[Trooper224]

The P35 is very much a niche weapon these days. I don't really know which segment of the market this "sort of, but not really an HP" is intended to appeal to. For HP lovers who enjoy the history and aesthetics of the design, this is rather "meh". I suspect the same for those looking for a pistol for defensive use or dept. issue. It lacks much of what that segment demands: light rail, polymer frame, striker fired, etc. It'll be gone in a couple of years.

[JonInWA]

I may have mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I strongly suspect that the new High Power with a metal frame will morph into a polymer-frame gun, which should be much more market- and price competitive.

I see the magazine well, frontstrap and magazines/magazine baseplates as being significant improvements as they are. but the weight and cost as they are render it pretty non-competitive in my opinion. BH Spring Solutions has an interesting through test and analysis discussion on their website worth a gander: https://bhspringsolutions.com/index....94744873046875

Best, Jon