So… bye bye Browning High Power?
Small arms manufacturer Browning has ended production of the Browning Hi Power semiautomatic handgun. The legendary pistol served in armies worldwide, from Nationalist China to the British Special Air Service and was one of the first high capacity pistols ever invented. An invention of prolific arms designer John Moses Browning, the Hi Power was the inventor’s last pistol design.
I don’t wanna talk about it. I just hope some company buys the tooling and continues to make it to the same standards of excellency, like they did with Llama. (Okay, they improved the Llama by using better steel, but you know what I mean.)
So good and beautiful a gun cannot be allowed to disappear.
(Thanks to several Readers who wrote to tell me about this.)
And upon hearing the news the first place I rushed to . . . . Kim DuToit.
very sad news indeed.
According to at least one source part of the problem is the tooling is worn out, and would take more money to recreate than they would get back.
Buy two, soak one in cosmoline.
One of two things is going to happen:
1. Some enterprising entrepreneur is going to try to build them.
2. The price for a HiPower is going to skyrocket.
I have two of these Hi-Powers, one a recent new one from Browning and the other an FEG knockoff which is not bad but not too great. The FEG knock off uses the same mags but the parts are not exactly interchangeable. I do suspect that if the patent has expired there will be some wonderful new Hi-Powers in the near future kind of like the old 1911 which I really love to shoot.
I like steel guns and I know there are so many features on the new ones just like cars that let you watch TV while you are backing up and my old Ford F-150 does not do that and it will probably out live me.
Good news for CZ, which still makes the (improved HP) CZ-75.
Doesn’t FN make the Hi-Power too? I’ve never quite understood the relationship between FN Herstal and Browning USA.
I own a Browning BDM 9mm. From what I understand, it’s solely a Browning USA designed and made handgun, which only bears a skin deep resemblance to the Hi-Power.
The ones sold in the US by Browning were manufactured by FN (originally in Belgium and then later in Portugal. Much more to the story but that’s the TLDR version)
The BDM was not a Hi Power (AKA Grande Puissanc, GP, P-35 etc.) and was only manufactured in the US.
FN marked pistols were imported, usually with a lower grade of finish and fewer features and retailed for lower than a “Browning”, even though they came off the same production lines.
Sad, but not surprising. The Highpower never really had the same enthusiast market as the 1911 has, which means that they never had eleventy dozen companies making parts and clones.
Once it started losing out on military contracts, the writing was on the wall.
But, as mentioned above, there’s still the CZ-75.
I remember Sean Connery doing some good work with a HiPower in A Bridge Too Far. I don’t know how true the scene was, but Connery handled the pistol like he knew what he was doing.
Much as I love the Browning, the painful truth is that the trigger on the 1911 is better, the Tupperware guns are lighter. Having said that, I’m not selling mine.
The interesting part is that IIRC, Argentina, Indonesia, and I think India had licenses to make them. I’d bet on someone continuing to make Brownings of one sort or another for years to come.
Don’t the Canadians do likewise? I seem to recall that Connie’s HP came from Canuckistan…
They did, but Inglis isn’t making them any longer.
My father had an Inglis made Browning. Beautiful. My father described it as something he could use to drive tacks with.
I’m pretty sure it was his favorite.
Now I’m really pissed I didn’t buy one of those Israeli trade-ins from AIM Surplus when they had them. For $400. I’m so stupid.