HPShooter,
You are correct. The CA UNDERCOVER, which was their first offering, was designed by Doug McClennahan. He was a design engineer for COLT, HIGH STANDARD and RUGER. None of those companies would give his design for the light weight, solid frame, small UNDERCOVER the production nod. So, he started his own company, gaining financial backing in 1964 and beginning production in 1965, in Bridgeport. The first President and COO was Dave Ecker, whose son, Nick is the guy who resurrected the CA company from CHARCO (the 2nd Gen. 1991 - the one with the bad rep and barrel addresses of Ansonia, CONN, and run by the former VP of sales who did a leveraged buy-out of the original CA Corp) in 1999. Many of the features of the CA revolvers were designs first drawn by McClennahan and similar to features found on COLTs and RUGERS. Those guns were not CHEAP, POORLY made nor fragile. They were designed from the ground up to be tough, light weight, have fewer moving parts than any other revolver of the time, had 8 groove button broached rifling (no one else does this) and solid upper frames with NO side plates, specially designed crane assemblies that do not weaken the frame below the barrel attachment, as is the case with S&W revolvers, etc. etc. The cost was kept down by skipping some of the final finishing steps. In the late 1980's when CA began putting a finer final polish on their pieces and increased their prices - there was a general outcry from their fans concerning the fact that they now cost about 80% of what S&Ws cost - previous to this they had run about 60 to 70%. Do you run across a CA stinker? Yep, just like any other of the manufacturers. The success of the 1st Gen. CA revolvers rests in the fact that they ultimately produced about two dozen different models and variations and produced approx. 1,090,000 handguns between 1965 and 1991.
