This damn gun keeps tempting me over and over... its a "Nosferatu" in my mind: every time I think I have driven the stake through it and no longer want one, I continue to be tempted.
I owned one in the past. I actually sold it to the wife of a VPD constable... so hopefully it worked out well for them!
It has some good things going for it. The grip is good. It is a still somewhat of a unique pistol on the Canadian market. At the end of the day though, it is an "underdog" pistol. It is a gun for people who want to have the un-GLOCK. Its a gun for the kind of people that want a Chrysler muscle car instead of a Ford or Chevy muscle car, or they want a... whatever... they want the pretender that will never occupy the throne, because the big boy on the block is just too commonplace and obvious.
For better or worse, I tend to be one of those people.
Hence the continued temptation. (The pistols I mainly use are the GLOCK 19 - and some GLOCK 23, the HK P7M8, P7M13, and the SIG 228 and 229).
The sights... are completely wack. I wanted to love them. Apparently some people do love them. Damned if I can understand why. The main problem with them in my view is... the sight picture either lines up right on the money at the distance the gun is sighted in for or... you are going to struggle to estimate where to put the sights. There is no putting the front sight up above the rear sight for a longer shot. At distances other than what it is sighted in for, the rear sight just becomes a useless distraction. I had to resort to ignoring the rear sight altogether for the most part and just thinking in terms of pointing the gun. It is not a system that jives with my eyes or my shooting experience. For reference, I like Trijicons on GLOCKs and most other pistols (or SIGlites/Meprolights, just normal three dots. I don't like the stock plastic "U" sights on GLOCKs either. Also totally wack). I find three dots infinitely easier to use. Steyr is now shipping pistols (the "C" guns) with three dots. There will be a small hardcore cult of trapezoid sight enthusiasts forever (mostly on the internet, I wold think) but it is overall an inferior system that no other pistol maker has, or ever will, use. If I get a Steyr "M" in the future it will have to have three dot sights. I was going to order some three dots for my old one, but I sold it before doing so.
The other thing, I found the "fully supported chamber" to be too much. There is no need for the chamber to be so tight and so supported on those guns, and it does decrease reliability. When they get dirty they can fail to feed far easier than their competitors.
If you have any parts problems, as some people did with the M series triggers, you will no have an easier time getting parts. Even the mags take work to find.
The main thing with Steyr pistols in Canada though, is that they are not imported here anyway. I've mentioned this several times on here, but I'll say it again. All the M9A1 and M40A1 pistols in Canada are 2003-2007 manufacture (roughly), and they are all "special run" pistols with 106mm barrels, as the gun normally has a 102mm barrel. In 2008 Steyr pistols left the U.S. market. When they returned to the U.S. market in 2010, they came with a redesigned trigger and extractor. They also dropped that weird cone-thing on the breachface that works as part of the loaded chamber indicator (at least I think they dropped that). That cone was a bad idea. I can post some pictures later to explain what I mean. I think it messed with reliable and predictable ejection. The new redesigned pistols all have "W" (1) as the middle letter in the three letter date code (20
10, 20
11, etc.). The ones in Canada all have "O" (0) as the middle letter (20
04, 20
05, etc.). The redesigned guns also have a left-to-right roll pin through the slide under the rear sight. This is the mark of the new trigger. No rollpin = old stock.
I hope that North Sylva, the supposed "Steyr Distributor" for Canada will get some new 106mm "M" pistols in. Some "C" and "S" pistols with a threaded barrel would be cool too. Steyr has completely dried up on the Canadian market though. I am a Steyr nut myself (I have three Steyr rifles I love), but there is just nothing out there right now. Strangely there seems to be more .50 cal rifles available from the sight sponsors than any other Steyr product. If the redesigned pistols do arrive, I will probably snap one up and see if things have changed for the better. I hope they do, because Steyr rocks! GLOCK, SIG and some of the other big boys make an objectively better pistol, but there is room for everyone. I have a Luger I shoot sometimes too, and not because it is the most reliable, bomb-proof design of all time. Some guns are just cool.
