The new (2017) Cobra differed from the old in several meaningful ways. (2) The Night Cobra’s lineage traces back to the original Cobra and Detective Special. The original Cobra was built from about 1950 to 1981, and has the distinction of being the first “snake” in the Colt family. It was a market leader, and arch rival Smith & Wesson scrambled to produce their own aluminum-framed compact, the Chief’s Special Airweight, to catch up. (1) The original Cobra was essentially an aluminum-framed model of the wildly popular Detective Special, which shaved about seven ounces off the weight of the all-steel gun. I have to specify “new version,” because the “Cobra” name was recycled from Colt’s legendary past, where it represented a very different revolver than this new product. What Colt had waiting for us was the new version of the Cobra revolver. January 2017, SHOT Show Media Day at the Range–RevolverGuy gets their hands on the new Colt Cobra for the first time.
For RevolverGuys like me, who remembered the times before the long Colt blackout, it was difficult to wait until SHOT Show finally rolled around, to get our first look at this new, rotating Colt. It was in the final month of that year that Colt caught all of us flat-footed with media announcements discussing a new revolver that would debut at the 2017 SHOT Show, just a few weeks later. This revolver renaissance kicked off just a few years ago, in 2016. In contrast to the stagnation that characterized the company for decades, we’ve seen a flurry of exciting new revolvers from Colt, to include the excellent King Cobra, the Diamondback-like King Cobra Target, and the long awaited Python. We’ve been really impressed by the energy and products from the good people in Hartford, lately. There are still challenges to deal with, but the revitalized commercial division now has a chance to help lead Colt towards a better future.Ī major part of this recovery is an improved and expanded catalog. Since emerging from the latest one in January 2016, Colt has been working hard to recapture a portion of the commercial market, and with gun guys like Paul Spitale helping to guide the effort, things are looking much better now for the iconic American company. The company changed hands a few times, and there were bankruptcies. The National Park Service is currently in the process of turning it into a National Historic Park. US Fire Arms Manufacturing Company continued to make excellent SAA copies there for a few years, but they too, sadly disappeared from the gun scene. Colt’s historic factory, with the onion-shaped blue dome, was vacated by Colt in 1994, 127 years after it was rebuilt, following a fire.
There was a nasty rumor going around that the Custom Shop was still making Single Action Army models, but I didn’t know anyone who actually saw one in the wild.
The only new Colts you were likely to find in your local gun shop were AR-15 variants and a rare 1911 that dripped out of a faucet that someone had failed to shut off all the way. In the early 1990s, the company made a deliberate decision to focus on military contracts, and in the process, they virtually abandoned the commercial market. There was a time, not long ago, when the Rampant Pony had been stabled and it looked like the vet would be putting it down soon. I can’t tell you how much it pleases me to write that!
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