Walther has never seemingly been as inclined to do much in the way of advertising as other gun companies. Perhaps they feel their name and history should speak for itself. Dunno.
Their limited 1-year warranty wasn't their greatest selling point, either, although S&W was known to absorb minor repair costs in the interest of consumer relations, since it's Walter's American representative/importer, operating as Walther America (owned and operated by S&W).
It's nice to see that Walther has finally started to offer American customers a limited lifetime warranty (to the original purchaser) on their new PPQ model, though (which must be done through S&W).
Whenever I've asked the folks at either the main S&W plant or their Walther America company about whether the guns would ever receive some greater advertising exposure and appear in greater numbers, I've been told that Walther has been focusing much of its attention on its international LE/Gov sales in recent years.
S&W counts the profits from their import agreement and sales of Walther products in their bottom line, and they naturally want to see more, not less, in the way of sales. Read their annual shareholder reports and they discuss continuing sales successes with Walther products.
Then again, Walther has also been involved in a joint venture with Magnum Research, Inc on a P99 derivation. Look at the latest Magnum Research, Inc catalog for 2011 and the MR9/MR40 models on page 9
http://www.magnumresearch.com/docs/11MRIBrochure.pdf
The P99 series has been tested and even used in LE here and there in this country, but not in what you might remotely call a significant amount (I once spoke with a fed rangemaster who had been involved in some T&E of the P99 in standard (now called AS) configuration and 9mm, and knew of an occasional local cop who carried one on-duty). Guess Walther never really felt like pushing for much in the way of LE/Gov sales here. Dunno. Not privy to their corporate thinking in Germany.
The Walther PPK & PPK/S model currently being produced at the Houlton plant of S&W are licensed copies. Personally, I've never been particularly impressed by the many examples of older PP's, PPK's & PPK/S's I've seen come through the range over the years, ranging from old war production to the Interarms guns. It was always a coin toss whether one would feed and fire normally, even using hardball. Some did, and some didn't.
They were, however, sort of a 'lodge pin' among an older generation of cops. You carried a S&W or Colt snub revolver, or a Walther, as an off-duty weapon. That kind of thing.
S&W has tried to make some refinements to the design (which reportedly created some headaches for them for a while), but they also helped address the old 'slide bite' issue by incorporating an extended beaver tail. I'm told the newest of them run just fine and are selling well.
I saw a brand new one come through a range a while back. Without knowing exactly what to expect, I helped run it through some "break in". It fired normally, reliably and accurately for a couple of boxes of ammunition (I was told it was right out-of-the-box when brought to us) before I lost interest and wandered off to do other things. I guess that put it up with the better running Interarms guns I'd seen and used in times past.
Still wouldn't want to own or carry one, myself, though.
