They will not import new steyrs until old stock is sold ... so in about 10 years maybe.
Funny... but unfortunately true I think.
Canadas styer fan club is too small for anyone to care about us.
Also true I would say.
there was also a recall on some of the pre roll pin A1's.
The recall is actually on the 2010-onward (roll pin, redesigned trigger and extractor) guns. Which doesn't exactly inspire a ton of confidence in the redesign, but - like IMLugger I am another ex-M9A1 owner that continues to post about these pistols - and I am still curious to see if they have fixed the short comings of the design. I love Steyr (I have 3 Steyr rifles I love) but my experience with my 2006 produced M9A1 was... not all that positive.
If you look at the recall notice from Steyr you will see that all the recall guns have a 7-digit serial number starting with a 2 or 3. These are the new 2010-onward guns with the roll pin in the slide. The guns that we have had in Canada are the 2004-2008 MA1's, which have a six digit serial number that always starts with a "0". There are also some of the original Steyr M9's in Canada (the 1999-2003 bluish looking design with the proprietary rail system) but they are not overly common.
If you look at the picture of the Steyr M9A1 pistol that recently went up on the Wolverine website, you can see that it is still in the "old" (2004-2008) date code range:
http://www.wolverinesupplies.com/details/16108/Steyr-M-A1-Pistol-9mm-Black.aspx
It has the 6-digit serial number starting with a "0", and it has a "VOT" (November 2008) date code. My local store (Reliable) recently got in some "new" Steyr M9A1 pistols, some with night sights and some with trapazoids, and I was interested to look at them because I wanted to know the answer to this very question: are they the redesigned pistols? The date codes on those ones were all the second half of 2008, mostly around July 2008, so no. So, it appears that maybe we are at least getting to the end of the old stock, as they stopped making those guns in 2008.
But, all the MA1 pistols in Canada I have personally ever been aware of were made before Steyr pulled their pistols out of the U.S. market for redesign (among other reasons). So, regrettably, I think the comment about North Sylva trying to clear out old stock is accurate. At the very least, somebody somewhere - whether it is in Canada, the United States or Austria is still trying to move the stock that was made before the redesign. I played around with the trigger on some of the ones Reliable brought in around January of this year (~July 2008 production) to see if the trigger was as I remember it... and it was. Take-up, break-point, and reset are all "mushball" on those guns. I think of the stock GLOCK 5.5 trigger as a benchmark that other guns in this class must compare themselves against, and the 2004-2008 Steyrs fall short in my opinion... out of the box anyway. There are some tricks and some replacement parts that have been devised by the SteyrClub.com guys and some others in the States, but I think you have to compare out-of-box to out-of box.
I have nothing against this gun. I actually really
want to love it, and, as I say, I love this company, but I have to be honest with myself and with you guys about my observations. The trigger is not a strong point for the gun, and neither are the sights. The company needed to address some of these issues... and they have, we just haven't seen the fruits of that here in Canada yet.
I think that the e-mail to Rob at Wolverine is a good start. As consumers we need to tell these businesses we frequent (so often) what it is we want. The first letter in the code is the month. The second two letters are the year (just Google "Steyr Date codes" if you want to know more). In order to assure yourself that you have the new design of pistol, only the middle letter need be "W" (1), which would indicate that it was made in 20
10, 20
11, 20
12, etc.
The Steyr Scout that I currently have (which came from Praetorian in Calgary) is 2010 date coded, and I am pretty sure that the Scout rifle Reliable had up until recently was newer date-coded... so it is not as if
no newer Steyr products are getting in. Somebody, and I perfectly understand why, is trying to clear out the rest of the 2004-2008 pistols. Be an informed customer and demand what you want! I know I won't be bothering with taking a serious look at Steyr pistols again until I see that they are the redesigned ones.
