Colt: The Continued Soap Opera.

[DPris]

IF Colt can stay afloat, I wouldn't give up on the new DA revolver.
Denis

 

[Aragon]

You keep saying you're sure they are there. But how can you be sure? Have you actually seen them? If not, why are you sure? It may make sense to you that they would be kept and no sense at all that they would simply be trashed, but I recall (and apparently so does Fuff) seeing reports that that is exactly what happened. Apparently because the owners had no plans to used them, assumed no one else would want them and saw no reason to keep them, even though it might cost them nothing to do so.

It doesn't take a great deal to realize that at the very least, those that coordinated the museum auction for Zilhka would have realized the value in some of the stuff that some believe was "trashed."

 

[Aragon]

Colt's not going to be producing new DA revolvers. The sunk costs were paid by the LEO orders. Consumer guns were gravy. No mass orders = no new revolver in the style of the old Pythons.

It's time for Colt to just dissolve into bankruptcy and start over as a part of Cerberus or Freedom Group.

Building DA revolvers isn't akin to building cars or satellites. Depending on what road Colt takes, I could easily see them building DARs again.

FWIW, the Freedom Group no longer exists. It has become the Remington Outdoor Company.

 

[blarby]

They could bring back the colt trooper II.

ITS friggin perfect

I wish....

I hope that colt gets new management, without screwing the bondholders. At this point that would appear to require either divine intervention, or a really savvy judge and counsel. We'll see.

If investors get a bad taste in their mouth for gun companies, that's not good for anyone.

 

[Old Fuff]

They could bring back the colt trooper II. ITS friggin perfect. I wish....

They can't and won't. For a simple reason. In today's economy they can't make it and offer it for sale at a price most buyers would likely be willing to pay.

However the good news is that they show up on the second-hand market. So keep you're eyes open.

 

[Old Fuff]

It doesn't take a great deal to realize that at the very least, those that coordinated the museum auction for Zilhka would have realized the value in some of the stuff that some believe was "trashed."

The "stuff" you refer to (drawings, process sheets, gauges, etc.) had no value what-so-ever. They might have if the company had any intention of returning the models they were for, but they knew that that no one was going to do that, including themselves. The machinery and technology was already gone, and in the highly unlikely event that they changed their mind new machinery, tooling, and processes would be entirely different. They understood, what apparently you don't, that these guns were no longer economically viable. :banghead:

Rest assured that when they dumped the stuff they wouldn't have if they thought they could sell it and turn a buck.

 

[Resist Evil]

Once Woolworth's (there are many other examples, but WW was first to mind) kicked the bucket, I learned that no famous long-time business enterprise could last forever. I hope Colt's can survive, but if it cannot, it is not the end of the world. We all love the Colt's legacy, but soulless management can drive any enterprise into the ground.

 

[blarby]

I have one, fuff.

I'd happily pay $1000 for another, brand new one.

 

[Hookeye]

What % of Colt's business is firearms?
I know years ago a local business bought crucible magnets from Colt Industries.

Grew up shooting Colts. Had a few. Only one I have now is my Commander, and it's been flawless. Has some marks due to carry, but that's what i bought it for. $675 when H&K compacts came out. People said I was stupid to buy it.

It has around a 2# trigger pull from the factory and chews the X out at 50 ft.

How much is an H&K compact worth used now vs my junky built by UAW 1911?

Took a deer with an older blued Python. Deer wasn't much to look at, but popping one with my dad's old gun made it cool. Eh, I'd rather have a 686 for hunting, if I ever went nuts and back to .357 revolver. Like a 629 better

 

[Hookeye]

I don't like seeing any long standing biz go under, but if they mismanage so be it.

Kinda sorta like Pythons/Diamondbacks.......they are nice. Think the muzzles could have been better done as far as looks (don't like donut, King Cobra muzzle better IMHO). Also don't like rear sight/topstrap. Profile and overall look- prefer Smith.

IMHO the hype they're getting is way outta line. AMC zombie series pushed stainless Pythons to silly. Financial turmoil has pushed all of the Colts well past that.
At my LGS folks are going crazy for anything Colt.

 

[Aragon]

The "stuff" you refer to (drawings, process sheets, gauges, etc.) had no value what-so-ever...

You're simply wrong about that. Even if the company had no use for the original drawings, they would have been worth a huge amount of money at auction. The same company that Zilhka used to auction the contents of Colt's museum would have been more than eager to auction things like original engineering drawings.

I'm well aware the machinery dedicated to making the DA revolvers and other models is long gone -- but I'm not talking about that either. I made that very clear several postings ago.

 

[Aragon]

Once Woolworth's (there are many other examples, but WW was first to mind) kicked the bucket, I learned that no famous long-time business enterprise could last forever. I hope Colt's can survive, but if it cannot, it is not the end of the world. We all love the Colt's legacy, but soulless management can drive any enterprise into the ground.

A terrible example. Woolworth's was never a premium name brand -- it was a seller.

Names like Winchester Repeating Arms and Indian Motorcycles are far better comparisons. The Colt name will continue. There is no question there. It just depends on how much debt the surviving entity will have to service.

FWIW, Beretta S.p.A. was founded in AD 1526...

 

[JRH6856]

You're simply wrong about that. Even if the company had no use for the original drawings, they would have been worth a huge amount of money at auction. The same company that Zilhka used to auction the contents of Colt's museum would have been more than eager to auction things like original engineering drawings.

The drawings had no value (existing or potential) to the people who had them so they trashed them. They might have had value to collectors if they had had a chance to buy them. But they didn't. The auctioneers may have recognized the value if they had been made aware of the them, but there is no evidence that they knew the company had no use for them or that they were getting rid of them. If the company saw no value in them, there would have been no reason to make the auctioneers aware of them. It wasn't (yet) an episode of American Pickers.

 

[RustyShackelford]

30/06 BAR semi auto ....

A local gun shop chain is having a huge sale & they put out printed ads saying they offer a Colt licensed 30/06 BAR type semi auto rifle for approx $8000.00 USD. I think the ad states only 1000 Colt licensed rifles were produced.
The rifle includes a nice wood case, cleaning items, manuals, etc.
The firearm was manufactured by a shop out of Ohio not Colt or Colt's CT labor force, .

I, for one, would not purchase any Colt .45acp pistols or firearms. Who would provide the repairs or service if Colt shuts down?
Who would provide Colt factory parts or magazines if production stops?
What if the gun is junk or breaks?
Colt needs more than a legendary name, they need quality firearms.

 

[Aragon]

What % of Colt's business is firearms?
I know years ago a local business bought crucible magnets from Colt Industries.

Grew up shooting Colts. Had a few. Only one I have now is my Commander, and it's been flawless. Has some marks due to carry, but that's what i bought it for. $675 when H&K compacts came out. People said I was stupid to buy it.

It has around a 2# trigger pull from the factory and chews the X out at 50 ft.

How much is an H&K compact worth used now vs my junky built by UAW 1911?

Took a deer with an older blued Python. Deer wasn't much to look at, but popping one with my dad's old gun made it cool. Eh, I'd rather have a 686 for hunting, if I ever went nuts and back to .357 revolver. Like a 629 better

"Colt Industries" is not "Colt's Manufacturing." Two different companies, the latter being the gun company.

 

[Aragon]

The drawings had no value (existing or potential) to the people who had them so they trashed them. They might have had value to collectors if they had had a chance to buy them. But they didn't. The auctioneers may have recognized the value if they had been made aware of the them, but there is no evidence that they knew the company had no use for them or that they were getting rid of them. If the company saw no value in them, there would have been no reason to make the auctioneers aware of them. It wasn't (yet) an episode of American Pickers.

Wrong. They could have at the very least been sold as collector's items.

 

[Aragon]

They can't and won't. For a simple reason. In today's economy they can't make it and offer it for sale at a price most buyers would likely be willing to pay.

However the good news is that they show up on the second-hand market. So keep you're eyes open.

I'm fairly certain there's no one that knows how much it would cost to produce a Colt Trooper II using a modern production process today. Possibly Colt's does, but I doubt it.

That precludes anyone from knowing if they could offer it for sale at a price where sufficient people would buy it to meet their IRR requirements.

Depending on what a final production process looked like in terms of direct labor hours (and capital depreciation), I'm not sure Colt's couldn't produce DA revolvers at a cost similar to S&W for instance. (It would be fascinating to study how long time S&W DA revolver designs have changed over the past 30-40 years to take advantage of current production processes.)

Doing so might possibly require a limited number of product design changes to facilitate manufacturability, but writing-off of Colt's in the DAR market as you're trying to do simply doesn't make sense.

 

[Aragon]

A local gun shop chain is having a huge sale & they put out printed ads saying they offer a Colt licensed 30/06 BAR type semi auto rifle for approx $8000.00 USD. I think the ad states only 1000 Colt licensed rifles were produced.
The rifle includes a nice wood case, cleaning items, manuals, etc.
The firearm was manufactured by a shop out of Ohio not Colt or Colt's CT labor force.

Ohio Ordinance has been producing semi-automatic BARs for a very long time. Quality stuff. It sounds like they licensed Colt's name for a run and nearly doubled the price.

I, for one, would not purchase any Colt .45acp pistols or firearms. Who would provide the repairs or service if Colt shuts down?

A competent local gunsmith?

Who would provide Colt factory parts or magazines if production stops?

Brownell's, Numerich and others? (I would rely on 3rd party magazines to begin with, personally.)

What if the gun is junk or breaks?

See above.

Colt needs more than a legendary name, they need quality firearms.

There you go again. Inferring that Colt's is manufacturing sub-quality firearms when they are not. Colt's IS building high quality firearms -- TODAY.

 

[Old Fuff]

Colt could go through the "new product" route and introduce a whole new revolver. But if they do so they will have to amortize the design, development, and tooling costs into the price. They're competitors at Smith & Wesson, Ruger and Taurus have already done this with their own extensive line-up of products.

Then a realistic look at the market shows that the revolvers' share has been declining at a steady pace, with the exception of small, pocket-sized models - but these too have been overtaken by less expensive polymer-frame, striker fired pistols, that also offer the manufacturer a better profit margin.

I have no doubt that if the company survives the current mess they might introduce a revolver, but if they do it will hardly save the day, and if it fails - as so many recent introductions have done in the past - it could kill the goose that didn't lay a golden egg.

 

[JRH6856]

Wrong. They could have at the very least been sold as collector's items.

Yes, they could have. We're not saying the drawings didn't have some value. They did but only to collectors and they would have had to be sold to realize that value.

But they weren't because the owners apparently did not recoginize they might have collector value or any value at all. And having no recogized value, there was no reason to keep them. New owners quite often make decisions and take actions that the previous owners would never hav considered.

Just because you see the potential value now doesn't mean anyone making decisions at Colt saw any value at the time.

Whatever. The drawings were reportedly trashed so it is rather pointless to argue about what value they might have if they had been retained.

OTOH, I would be very happy if someone digs through some old boxes in the back of a warehouse and finds them where someone dumped them.

 

[gearhead]

Engineering drawings, process sheets, obsolete gauges, etc. are intellectual property that a competitor could use. The attorneys would never allow those items to get out the door without being destroyed. Failed or pre-production prototypes are a different matter, they may have had that kind of value when they were made but not after all this time, and they are of even less use than actual production firearms for reverse engineering.

 

[buckhorn_cortez]

I'm sure they're still in Colt's Document Control System (and not their museum which was auctioned) along with finishing process instructions, metal heat treat instructions, etc., etc.

Pure speculation on your part with no proof. You'd be surprised at what companies trash with no thought to future needs or worth. I worked for a large engineering company ($12B / year gross). They would regularly send the administrative staff to "clean out the archives" - and you'd learn about it after the fact - or, when you needed to find information from a past project and it was missing...

Don't conflate your sense of worth with management's sense of worth. If archives are taking up space that can be used for something management deems productive - archival material gets thrown out.

We lost all of the hard copy drawings stored in flat-files because management decided to turn the room into a kitchen / break room...

I have no doubt somebody at Colt had the capability of making as equally clueless decisions about Colt's archived material.

 

[Aragon]

Engineering drawings, process sheets, obsolete gauges, etc. are intellectual property that a competitor could use. The attorneys would never allow those items to get out the door without being destroyed. Failed or pre-production prototypes are a different matter, they may have had that kind of value when they were made but not after all this time, and they are of even less use than actual production firearms for reverse engineering.

Either they're worth something -- to collectors, competitors or the company itself or they're not. If there was concern about "intellectual property that a competitor could use", then they have internal value to Colt as well.

If company management was truly obtuse enough not to realize the value retaining engineering drawings, process sheets, master gauging, etc. (which ain't the case), they all would have been sold when the museum was cleared out. To collectors alone that would have been seven figures and Donald Zilkha is a greedy guy.

I suspect the only way to know for certain (stories ain't gonna cut) would be to see the list of actual assets that secures Morgan Stanley's lifeline loan. On that list no doubt would be engineering drawings, process sheets, master gauging, etc. for every model Colt has made in the past 100 or so years.

 

[Aragon]

Pure speculation on your part with no proof. You'd be surprised at what companies trash with no thought to future needs or worth. I worked for a large engineering company ($12B / year gross). They would regularly send the administrative staff to "clean out the archives" - and you'd learn about it after the fact - or, when you needed to find information from a past project and it was missing...

Don't conflate your sense of worth with management's sense of worth. If archives are taking up space that can be used for something management deems productive - archival material gets thrown out.

We lost all of the hard copy drawings stored in flat-files because management decided to turn the room into a kitchen / break room...

I have no doubt somebody at Colt had the capability of making as equally clueless decisions about Colt's archived material.

Same goes for you.

I have logic on my side. You have stories.

The three kickers are the intrinsic value of the collection to collectors -- at the very least I'm sure Colt's could have received a few million in tax credits for donating the collection to a non-profit like the Cody Firearms Museum, the greed of Colt's management and the fact the drawings, specs, gauging, etc. don't cost a great deal to archive/store.

 

[JRH6856]

Well, there is always this at the Connecticut State Library:

Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company Records, circa 1810-1980 (RG 103)