Well, the stories about Colt Canada being shuttered other than for those on the C8 line is not comforting.
Also, that it's not just the Custom Shop director, but a substantial portion of the staff therein is also disquieting.
Sadly, what we know as Colt is a legacy of getting close to four decades' of case-example MBAs swooping in to companies and running them so as to not endanger profits to shareholders in the short term and ignoring long-term issues for the company at large. Which is sore complicated with Defined Benefits UAW contracts in place.
What seems likely--to me--is that, if Colt is to remain a US arms company, it will probably have to go through the throes of full-on Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The peices would be reassembled in some rural, open-shop state where everyone can pull together and work to produce quality products as a team. If they try to limp along under Chapter 11, they will have to adhere to the whims and wishes of the Connecticut Teachers Retirement System (one of the major owners) and to the terms of UAW contracts drawn up in the 70s, also the UAW consortium that owns a sizable percentage, too.
What that means is that Colt is not free to pursue what it ought to--firearms. Because they have to respond to the dividend requirements of all these players, they have no real budget for R&D. Not so much for the expense of R&D, so much as they cannot afford to put new products out that do not realize immediate profits (like the Colt 2000 debacle).
I'd rather not see Colt go the way of AMC, or DeSoto, but they might. Military production contracts are not what they once were, and there area lot of players in that market, too. The retail arms market is also full of players, and they are all out chasing very narrow margins and customer segments.
Or, at least that's my 2¢