The Wilson Combat SDS.

Yes, this is yet another review of the 1911. I know, you are already holding the magazine up over your mouth in a polite gesture to hide a very wide yawn... You've read plenty of 1911 reviews before... or at least you should have since the 1911 has been around for almost a hundred years. In fact, the 1911's story goes back over a hundred years ago. So why am I subjecting you to yet one more 1911 review? Let's go back to over a hundred years ago and take a look at how all this started.

In 1904 the US Army conducted the Thompson-Lagarde Tests. These tests were a series of almost scientific experiments conducted on live cattle and cadavers. Pretty much they lined things up, shot them, then examined the results. They tested a number of calibers and concluded that the next official military handgun should be no less than .45 caliber. And this is where we begin. The results of these tests spawned the 1906 Trials where the Ordinance Board finally decided that the Army wanted a .45 caliber Automatic pistol. They took bids from all the major gun makers at that time and selected the best three to move on to the next series of trials. Colt, Savage, and Deutsche Waffen and Munitions Fabrik. I'm not sure why, but Deutsche Waffen and Munitions Fabrik dropped out of the running... probably because the roll marks to put the company name on the gun would require a barrel 34 inches long and small billboard. No matter what the reasons, it was Colt against the Savage.

Colt already had a good design to go on by John Moses Browning, the famous Colt Model 1902. The Savage pistol was, well, we forget what it was. Colt took the little 1902 which was then chambered for the walloping .38ACP and told Browning, “We want this, but bigger.” So Browning gave them the Model 1905 which met the criteria that the US Army was, ahem, shooting for. Sorry.

These two pistols, the Savage something or other and the Colt Model 1905 went head to head with improvements and test trials in a miniature arms race until 1911 when the US Army finally said “That's enough, we've simply run out of ammunition. We want the Colt because it looks more sporty.” Okay, they really didn't say that... what happened during the last trial was astonishing. The Colt fired 6,000 rounds of ammo without a single malfunction. The unremembered Savage pistol had thirty seven. The Colt was clearly the winner. The rest is, as they say, History. From that moment on, the 1911 has been the pistol of choice for serious work ever since.

At least until the 80's when people listened to music by Cindy Lauper and Culture Club which might have boon what effected the Ordinance Board's head when they selected the Beretta 92 as a replacement. Since that time, various military units have decided that decision was rubbish and they've been going back to the 1911 unit by unit. Today as I'm writing this, there are many rumors going around that the military is wanting to adopt another .45 caliber automatic. It's been a long road, and it looks like it could have been just a great big beltway.

What's different about this go around? Well I just learned the other day that Colt, has finally been sold to the glue factory. Word has it that General Dynamics, the makers of such fine military hardware as our M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank, is the one that snagged the pink slip for the prancing pony. Rumor has it that the big GD is only interested in part of the Colt company, the military side, with little interest at all in the civilian side... unfortunately it is the civilian side that makes the handguns. What will come of this? We should now by the time you are reading this article.

What makes all this so remarkable, is that since those early times the 1911 has been left virtually unchanged. If you were to take a modern made 1911... a brand new one, out of the box, jump in your Delorean sports car/time machine and go back to any time after the year 1911; you would have little problem finding someone who could replace a broken mainspring or firing pin, or give your pistol a crisp trigger job. I've been sitting here trying to think of things that people used back in the year 1911 that we still use today... I can think of only two things at the moment. The ball peen hammer and a hair brush. You can come up with your own list, but I'm moving on.

What has changed however, is not really anything design wise. We've made improvements in material science that allow us to make the old 1911 out of better materials with better metallurgy. For example, we can now select stainless steel for the gun and carbon fiber for the grips if we wanted. But like I said, the basic design is pretty much unchanged.

Another thing that has changed since then, is that we now have a gentleman by the name of Bill Wilson. Bill won the title of Pistolsmith of the Year by the American Pistolsmith's Guild in 2002. He won for good reasons, chief among them was that he knew how to make the 1911 really run. There have been many excellent, and I do mean truly excellent gunsmiths out there that know their way around the 1911. But none of them really have the name recognition that Bill Wilson has when it comes to parts and performance. And none of them have built such an empire around a single model of pistol. For example, if you want to buy a new magazine to feed your 1911 today, you will probably go out and buy a Wilson Combat magazine. I don't know of anyone that makes a better one.

Now, let's talk about this gun I have here with me now, and the reason I am subjecting you to “Yet Another 1911 Review” or an “YA1911R” for short. This is the Wilson Combat SDS, or “Stealth Defense System”. It is... (pausing to find better words and failing to do so) utterly fantastic. The front strap of the grip frame is checkered with such precision that it is a swiss watchmaker's fantasy. The machining and the way all the parts fit together... the overall build quality is just amazing. Wilson Combat gave the gun a number of custom features such as a beveled magazine well, the checkering I already mentioned on the high-cut front strap, flat and checkered mainspring housing, ultralight hammer and trigger, tritium filled night sights, and gorgeous checkered wood grips. That would be enough right here, but Bill Wilson wanted to kick it up a notch. He wanted to give it something a little extra.

The gun has a very handsome looking satin-black finish that Bill calls “Armor-Tuff”. I didn't know much about the finish so I had to look it up to find out just what it is. I found that Armor-Tuff is probably the most tedious of finishes that I could ever imagine. They take the slide (for example) and after it is milled, machined, and gone over so it's physically perfect according to specs, they use a very fine grain particle bead blast to scrub the metal and to prepare the surface and then they dehorn the part. On top of that, they parkerized it. For any other gun company, they could call it well and good at this point... and it would be. Most of the guns we used in World War II were parkerized and that finish did just fine through the worst of the worst conditions. Wilson Combat only calls it “ready for the next step” because they only parkerized the things to provide a bonding surface for the actual Armor-Tuff finish that you can see. The rest of it is sprayed on very carefully and then heat cured at only 300 degrees for a longer period of time. Kind of a Slow Roasting process. Like I said, “tedious”. The result of all that is what Wilson Combat calls the best protection against oil, acid, corrosion, and abrasion. They might be right. You can get the Armor-Tuff finish in Black, Grey, or (my favorite) OD Green. I have to tell you, the finish looks beautiful.

The whole gun, the SDS, looks and feels just like what a custom made 1911 should feel and look like. It shows you why the 1911 is just as amazing today as it was almost a hundred years ago. You can buy other guns made on different designs, but you can't arguably buy a better designed gun. Different is just that, it's different. That doesn't mean better. And as long as Wilson Combat keeps making guns like this... there will never be a better handgun.

The SDS is absolutely flawless. It is at the top of the list of all the handguns I have ever tested when it comes to quality and perfection. You have all the engineering cleverness of turn of the century genius John Moses Browning, backed up with space aged material science, computer controlled machining, and Bill Wilson's exacting demand for absolute quality. This gun is a mixture of savagery and shear elegance that you don't see very often... this is an irate 800 pound Gorilla wearing a tailored Armani suit crushing your skull flat with a velvet and silk bag covering a sledgehammer, who then drives off in a Bentley R Turbo. This is Al Capone on the cover of GQ. This is “An Affair to Remember” directed by Quentin Tarantino. This is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing AC-DC's “Thunderstruck”. You just don't get something like this every day.

There is a good reason for that... why we don't all have one of these things. This gun is astonishingly expensive. It is just shy of three thousand dollars. To give you an idea of how expensive that is, at the shop where I picked this gun up at... for the same cash plus sales tax, I could have opted for every other single handgun in the hole bloody place. Or I could have selected a brand new .50 cal sniper rifle, a sidearm to go with it, ammunition for both, and still have had enough left over for a pack of targets and earplugs. This is one expensive pistol.

So how does it shoot?

The gun came with a sheet from the factory showing a fifteen yard target and the pistol's shot group. It was of course simply one ragged hole. Just what you would expect. My best results mirrored the factory's. The gun was also perfectly reliable. I especially love the way the magazine holds the round almost directly in line with the chamber. This is different from other 1911 type guns which make the round jump up through the hoop instead of going straight in like a torpedo into the launch tube. Perfectly accurate and perfectly reliable. When it shoots, it feels like it is an extension of your will and you can hit anything with it. Even in total darkness, because the gun sports really good night sights with pale orange at the rear and green at the front so you know just where those sights are pointing and how to line them up. The whole gun is fantastic.

But is it worth the money? For some, no. It isn't worth it because it is just too expensive for everyday use. For others who like premium and exclusive quality, it is. This is why some people even when money is not a concern choose to drive a Ford Focus and others select a BMW M3. They prefer the premium and exclusive quality. There are no plastic bits, no shortcuts or cost saving compromises in this gun. Bill Wilson wanted to make the ultimate concealable 1911 for those with taste to truly appreciate it. He succeeded. This isn't just the best concealable 1911 I've ever fired... this the best 1911 I've ever fired period. This is the 1911 that John Moses Browning himself would be carrying today. I can give it no higher recommendation that that.