Having owned many SIG-Sauer pistols over the years and owning several now I think the German "made" (as they use US parts now) ones are clearly better. This was brought home to me when people started saying the SIG Pro has a better trigger than the P226 which is clearly bonkers if you look at the actual layout of the trigger mechanism in both guns. The reason people think that is because they don't fit them as well as they do in Germany.
The German ones aren't quite as good now as the gun is largely made in the US but even then they fit them better in Germany imo.
I remember when I first had a P229 back in 1993 then I handled one in Europe that had been put together in Germany and it was clearly far better, the finish was better, the trigger pull was smoother, there were no toolmarks inside the slide.
This isn't just confined to SIG-Sauer either, I remember having a Glock 21 with Austrian proofmarks on it and a US assembled Glock 21 side-by-side and the one sold in Europe was clearly put together more carefully, the breechface for example had been polished to remove a lot of the toolmarks from the cutter, the American one had a much rougher breechface. The slide to barrel fit on the one sold in Europe was clearly tighter. And bear in mind these guns were made around the same time.
I'm not quite sure what the explanation is, friend of mine said the US has a "pile them high and sell them quick" philosophy towards handguns, whereas in Europe you have to go through all kinds of licensing and so on, so it is a low volume product and the guys at the factory obviously take more time over them.
Also another difference are the proof house laws - the guns have to be submitted for independent inspection before they can be sold, although the big manufacturers usually have a proof house subsidiary inside the factory.
In Canada we have this weird hybrid situation where a lot of the guns come up from the US and the lower volume target models are imported from Europe but are rarely seen in the US.
