You know, I hear this a lot, but I don't run into that problem myself. Four THR Staff members went to a 1911-only Gunsite course a few years back and we didn't see many problems with the 40,000-some-odd rounds fired. We brought a cheap 1911 that never fed a complete magazine without misfeeding and it continued to misfeed. I also brought a Rock Island pistol with less than 50 rounds through it and it didn't misfeed once over 1,200 rounds, despite the fact that I deliberately never cleaned it.Tim and I taught a few 1911 specific classes in the last couple years, and we typically saw a failure rate of over 50% of the student pistols in each class. Something that really resonated with us was a pair of LEO’s who came to one class with the 1911s that they carried for work. The guys enjoyed the class so much they came back again the following year. This second time they still brought their 1911s, but told us they started to carry Glocks at work after seeing all the things that went wrong with the student guns and how difficult it was to keep the guns in top shape.
Being bombarded with nothing but the failures of the 1911 design, day in and day out – days, nights, weekdays, weekends, in person, on line, via email, by telephone, at work, on vacation – pretty much wore me out for the charm of tinkering with the gun. It is one thing to keep after 1-2 of your own 1911s, and a whole other matter to be a professional surrounded by guns constantly seeking your attention.
We saw a Ruger choke in a way that it needed to go the the armorer, but that was when Ruger was trying hard to get into the 1911 market and they'd sent one of their marketing guys to Gunsite with a new revision of the pistol. Turned out the extractor spring wasn't up to snuff. But the design was still in testing...
I get that people don't like 1911's. They were designed when labor was cheap and machining was expensive, and times have reversed that relationship. They're made of steel rather than plastic, so they're heavy. They have low capacity single-stack magazines, and everyone knows you need 15+ rounds in a defensive pistol. They need to be carried in condition 1 which frightens some people (generally the same people who aren't frightened of something like a Glock whose only external safety is disengaged by pulling the trigger.)
This doesn't make the design bad, and it certainly doesn't make the design inherently unreliable. We ran a Rock Island $500 special through Gunsite with no problems without cleaning it. We did the same with an STI VIP, a Baer, and saw lots of other firearms go through the same course of fire without issues over a week. Well-made 1911's are reliable, from the $4,000 custom guns all the way down to the $500 imports (at least some of them).
But the quote listed above? It doesn't match my experience, or the experiences of many here.
But this is the Internet. Everyone's opinion is equally valid, right?