Remington R51 to return?

[376Steyr]

I've been getting ads from Remington extolling the wonders of their new .380, but has anybody seen a re-issued R51 9mm yet? I know about the debacle of the first generation, but the new and improved ones were supposed to be out this past summer. They show up in the online catalog. Anybody seen one in the flesh?

[Petrol & Powder]

I haven't seen one yet but I really hope Remington follows through with the re-issue of the R51 [ R51 - 2.0 ?]
Now that Glock has a single stack 9mm there's going to be serious competition in that class and I'd like to compare those two pistols side by side.

The new 9mm R51 is a solid concept but Remington had problems putting it into production. It appears they did the right thing when problems surfaced by fixing the pistols that were released and stopping production to correct the problems. Hopefully Remington's reputation wasn't damaged.

[Tackleberry41]

I wonder if they will actually bring them back. It would take actual human effort to hand fit the parts, people they would have to pay. So would then raise its price, and no longer be able to compete with the other single stack 9s on the market. Only way it will be back is if they can get them to work without any hand fitting. Some of the flaws were not even an issue of not being fitted, but just sloppy manufacturing, like the sights falling out. Seems that they might have making a simple dovetail sight down where it wouldn't be an issue. Not like its something new.

If remington was run by gun people, it would be different, but its wall street people, and they only care about the numbers. If the math doesn't work out, they will drop the project.

[lefty o]

remingturds reputation has been damaged for alot of years before this R51 disaster! its too bad, because they have potential to make good stuff.

[OptimusPanda]

I hope they get around to making them correctly. The pedersen hesitation lock is very interesting. Sort of a short stroke gas piston arrangement where the gas piston is the case head and slide is the op rod and bolt carrier.

[bedbugbilly]

"new and improved re-issue R51"???? Sorry . . . but that should have never been required in the first place - it should have been "right" from the get go. I was interested in the R51 when they announced it and was looking forward to getting one. Once it became evident that the production models were not the quality of the ones they sent to "reviewers" . . . I quickly changed my mind. All I can say is I'm glad I purchased my Shield . . . it worked from the get go and eats anything I feed it. Unfortunately Remington broke the first rule of gun safety . . . they forgot to check the chamber and shot themselves in the foot with the R51.

[dkf]

I like the design of the R51 but some other company whom can make quality firearms should make it. Too many other very good pistols out there to risk Remington quality. I mean they couldn't even get the T&E guns they sent to reviewers and testers right for gods sake.

[FergusonTO35]

The only Remington handgun that interests me is the 1911, they are pretty sweet. R51, no thanks.

[JHeath]

Support the re-introduction of the R51, which we know can work well because some of them did. The reason to support the R51 is to encourage Remington to revive the .45acp Model 53, which the Navy and Marine Corps ordered in preference to the 1911. It's the great might-have-been of auto pistols, the orderer for 50,000 of them was interrupted by U.S. entry into the First World War. There's nothing you can do with a 1911 that hasn't been done by ten thousand other guys long ago. How cool would it be to start developing loads, sight, tweaks for these babies?

[OptimusPanda]

If only I could get one of those, and a Savage 1907 I'd be in .45 nirvana.

[Petrol & Powder]

The Pederson Hesitation lock is a sound concept and offers something between a simple blowback and a Browning tilting barrel design. The R51 has a lot of good points and looks like it would be an excellent little 9mm. I'd like to see the R51 make it in the market place but Remington needs to get the bugs worked out before they re-release the pistol.
The R51 has a lot to offer if they can make it work but Remington can't handle another false start.

[jmoore]

Support the re-introduction of the R51, which we know can work well because some of them did. The reason to support the R51 is to encourage Remington to revive the .45acp Model 53, which the Navy and Marine Corps ordered in preference to the 1911. It's the great might-have-been of auto pistols, the orderer for 50,000 of them was interrupted by U.S. entry into the First World War. There's nothing you can do with a 1911 that hasn't been done by ten thousand other guys long ago. How cool would it be to start developing loads, sight, tweaks for these babies?

Now that would be something! A near on 100 year delay in getting the .45's production up and running. I've had a bunch of .380 Remington 51s over the years and it's still one of my favorites. The 53 is so obscure your attached photo seems to be about the only one in print. I think the doom of the R51 for me was the aluminum used in the frame. Since the locking block goes crashing into the frame recess after a short reward travel I don't think it was going to last long. Saw some other dramas in a pre-purchase inspection and sadly backed away.

Done right, the Pedersen design ought to be a winner. But it may be too expensive to compete. Perhaps not unlike the first go around with the .380.

~http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b226/dave4201/Jmoore%20Stuff/handgun%20photos/32%20and%20380%20auto/2014-01-04jmoorestuff074_zps61410028.jpg
Best pointing, least recoiling, flattest pocket gun of it's day.

~http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b226/dave4201/Jmoore%20Stuff/handgun%20photos/32%20and%20380%20auto/2014-01-04jmoorestuff070_zpsf99bad07.jpg

[JHeath]

JMoore, there are some other photos of the Model 53.

I suspect the aluminum frame on the R51 can work. All aluminum is not equal, and some (like 7075) are really tough. Sounds like manufacturability issues around design details, which on review might have opened a can of worms about how much to revamp, cascading into the price point.

Remington hinted about following up the R51 with "bigger calibers". They certainly must have been looking hard at this Model 53 in their collection.

[pietro]

.

A .380 Browning Model 1955 is my story - and I'm stickin' to it ! :happy dance:

http://s26.postimage.org/4b4apng1h/DSCN1692.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/4b4apng1h/)

[Petrol & Powder]

jmoore wrote "Best pointing, least recoiling, flattest pocket gun of it's day."

I would submit that may still hold true today !!!

I carried an original Remington Model 51 for a while and it was an excellent gun.

I think Remington can make the new 9mm R51 work, the question is - can they make it work at a competitive price?

[Blackwater]

The processes at Remington, and the things they've turned out, are really interesting. First the Marlin debacle, now their .380. Amazing. I'm just guessing, but I've seen it in other companies/industries, and I suspect they appointed some not long out of college "manager" to ramrod the projects. Being well indoctrinated, but very inexperienced, and not understanding how things work in the real world, and unable or unwilling to understand how the old Marlin workers were key to producing good guns, the head idjit in charge went with the grandiose theories he'd been taught in some highly lauded "university," and thoroughly mucked up the whole thing. I don't know this to be true, but if anyone can provide any real insight and knowledge, I think we'd all like to hear about it. WHY a company fails is just as important as what they make, or were trying to. Liberal thought says that one can have anything one envisions if they just concentrate on it hard enough. Real world experienced people learn what matters through their experience, and observation and analysis. Theories are fine, but experience is pretty final. As I said, I've seen this happen in a local foundry, and elsewhere, and it's always sad to see it happen. The recently graduated engineer at the local foundry got his head for a little while, and thanks to good upper management, and good lead workers, he got his REAL "education" in a single project that he thoroughly messed up, even after being told by the workers that it could never work. He was humbled, and thereafter, learned to seek the advice of experienced men, and he wound up doing pretty well. Amazing how a little humbling can work to a company's or a man's good, isn't it? Anyone got insight into why and how Rem. messed up the Marlins initially, and the .380?

[Petrol & Powder]

I can't speak to the problem because I'm not privy to the inner workings of Remington but that doesn't sound too far off base.
It appears they had a good design but it didn't translate well into mass production.

[Tackleberry41]

I have asked in the past what they actually teach in business school. Ethics is probably not something they teach. I have worked at some major places and it was mind boggling the moronic decisions made. I guess in a business school vacuum, they might work, just not to well in reality. It was always about making money today, tomorrow didn't seem to be a concern at all. We see big firms in the news all the time, their only concern is the quarterly report. They act like the next quarter will never come. Given an option of $5 today that they can carve a slice off of for a bonus, or $100 over the next couple months, they pick the $5 every time. You try to say but your bonus off $100 will be bigger, they just look at you like your nuts 'you don't understand business'. I may not have gone to business school, but I know a money losing decision when I see one. They pay a bean counter $30k to figure out how to screw someone else out of $10k. I used to ask about the warranty claims on the cars I worked on, maybe instead of buying the cheapest *** evaporator core that then costs $2500 to replace, maybe a little better one that won't leak so easy. We would take them out of the box and they were leaking. It didn't seem to phase them, 'it comes out of a different account', like that changes anything. Yes they saved $1 per car assembling them, but then they have to sell 2500 cars to cover the one repair, and it wasn't like it was the occasional car, it was every one of them.

GMs business model seems to be, pump out as much junk as they can, fix them at the dealerships later, while borrowing tons of money they have no intention of repaying. They simply declare bankruptcy, wipe out the debt, and next day banks are lining up to loan them money again. McDonalds credit rating took a big hit recently as their plan was to sell bonds to investors, so they could then pay other investors who had stock stock. What sort of plan is that? Rest of us do that they call us dead beats for not paying our bills, but is perfectly acceptable for a company to do it. Or make a bunch of promises on benefits and retirement, then bail when the bills come due.

I doubt the R51 will hit the markets again. To get it to work, either a new design that didn't require hand fitting, or hand fitting parts. Which would increase the per unit cost, losing market share. Or they can abandon the project. It will come down to the math, which is slightly more money? Just like car companies, which is cheaper, fixing the cars or the lawsuits? They always pick the cheaper way, tho in the long run never seems to work out that way. They could just bite the bullet today, but then that affects this quarter and their bonus, yes it will cost more in the long run, but thats somebody else's problem.

[Petrol & Powder]

General Motors isn't in business to make cars and Remington isn't is business to make guns. Businesses exist for the sole purpose of making money!
Now, you can make a lot of money for a short period of time by producing a cheap inferior product with a high profit margin but your competitors will soon attempt to take market share away from you with a better product and a slimmer profit margin. Somewhere in there is a balance point between quality and cost.

Customers like to complain about quality but the reality is most of them aren't nearly as willing to pay for quality as they claim.

All of that being said, I don't think there was a board meeting at Remington where a bunch of executives sat around a table and said, "Let's make a new gun that's so cheap and bad it will destroy our company's reputation so that we can make a short term profit."

I do think they took a good design and moved it from prototype to mass production before they really knew how to handle the mass production part of that plan.

It will turn out to be a costly mistake and I seriously doubt they intended to produce an inferior product just to make a quick one time profit.

[Tackleberry41]

I doubt very much execs sit around saying lets make junk to destroy the company. Like I said I have worked at some large corporations, and the stuff they did was just mind boggling. Purely based on the numbers, no thought as to it actually working. Look at VW, its not like they sat down and said lets ruin the company, but they had invested to much in the new engine, so a conscious choice was made to develop the software to bypass the rules. Was there any sort of voice that said 'dang this is going to blow up in our face eventually'? So their efforts to make a product for less while increasing the profit margin gets that result. People who go to business school as pointed out are only in it to make money, they care little about the 'product'. Usually may not even care what the product is, their only interest is the per unit profit. Some companies still do a good job, rare to hear anybody talking bad about Ruger, I can't really think of any guns Ruger has come out with that flopped due to low quality. But Ruger is run by gun people, they know their making guns vs 'product'. Remington is run by Wall street, their only goal is money, and care little how they get it, be it screw the workers, suppliers, or customers, or all 3 for good measure. They just want their check. Do Freedom group execs sit around saying 'lets make junk...', not likely. But they would be the ones to say use a cheaper grade of steel in the barrels, or farm that out to some company, or those specs are good enough. And with the R51, somebody somewhere had to make a decision to send those guns out as is. Surely somebody assembling the guns pointed out 'hey the sights on some of these are pretty loose' or 'you can't rack the slide on 1/3 of the guns' and somebody bounced it up the chain, and it came back down 'were losing money send em out'. Ruger, well unlikely they would have let it get even that far, but Ruger would have said 'whoa, lets fix this issue'.

And yes I do know part of the problem is the customers, to many people like my mother who base their entire decision on the cost. I don't know how many times its bit her in the butt, goes and buys something and it falls apart 'it was cheap'. So companies all compete for that wal mart market. Apparently those of us who want a decent product for a fair price aren't loud enough. So we end up with a market of 2 extremes, bottom dollar junk or expensive custom work with very little in the middle. Fender guitars has 3 lines, a budget, chinese made, with the obvious problem of quality, a middle mexican made line, then a large price jump to the US made. Everything about the squire as their known is bottom of the barrel. I often wondered if they used refrigerator magnets for the pickups. A guitar to sound good requires certain things. One is you can't laminate strips of junk wood to make a body. I remember going with a friend to a music store, he wanted a guitar, not alot of money. I picked thru the rack of 10 exact same guitars, found 2 that would even play decent. The rest were so bad it would be near impossible to set them up to play properly. I tired to build guitars, but there was no market, got tired of being told "i can get it at the shop for half that'. Yea for Chinese made junk that you will now have to buy decent pick ups for, and pay someone to fix all the problems with, which ends up costing...what I was charging for one that needed no work.

[Petrol & Powder]

The product is only the means to make money.

You can make a high quality product a sell a few units at a high price with a high profit margin or you can make a lower quality product at a lower price with a smaller profit margin per unit and sell millions. There was a much larger market for Ford Model T's than there was for the Rolls Royce Phantom I but Rolls and Ford both needed to make a profit. Both business models (high volume/low profit vs. low volume/high profit) make money but ultimately you will reap more money with a less expensive product and a larger market.

Finding ways to reduce production cost while maintaining acceptable quality is where the big manufacturers increase their profit margins; sometimes they fall short of the quality that their customers will accept.

The statement that Ruger is run by gun people and Remington is run by Wall Street isn't exactly true. Both companies (any company for that matter) must make a profit to survive. The perception that Ruger is run by "gun people" is just that; a perception. Both companies are driven by an absolute and overriding need to make money or they will cease to exist. They may go about achieving that goal by different paths (price point, quality, cost per unit, profit margin vs. numbers of units sold, etc.) but there's not a capital enterprise on the face of this planet that exists only to make a quality product. Every business must make a profit the only difference is how they go about doing that.

[376Steyr]

Well, now. So far we've got essays on the existence of Bigfoot, some history of Bigfoot, some rants against Bigfoot, and some space alien vs. Bigfoot ramblings, but nobody has reported seeing a Bigfoot in the flesh yet.:popcorn:

[Petrol & Powder]

True but that's what you do when you don't have an actual bigfoot sighting to share :razz:

[Blackwater]

Some very good and applicable points made, and I suspect many engineers have a pretty level head. I've known many like that, and have one in FL as a very good friend who used to be a neighbor. Great guy and very practical. However, in today's PC environment, that kind of thinking has invaded ever nook and crany of our culture, including our businesses from time to time, and the factor of folks commonly thinking they can achieve anything they can envision often leaves out the "how" in "how do I get there?" Then too, there are always unanticipated results, which is why Ruger, for instance, fired the prototypes of the new 5-shot .480/.454's thousands of times to identify any "weak spots." There'll never be anything like experience, and occasionally, some companies don't quite do their due diligence, and that's when it tends to cost them.

Rem. is a fine company, normally, and has given us many fine things through the years, but they're no more immune from shafus than any other company. Companies are always run by men, and men are prone to failure for any number of reasons. We've all done dumb things in our time, and looked back, and said, "Why in the world did I ever think and do that?" Companies are no different, and the ground today is ripe for such to happen on both levels - individual and corporate - and do. Why is always the question they often don't want answered or known generally, and I can't rightly blame them. I'd hate like sin to have to admit here some of the stuff I've done! Why should they be any different?

[JHeath]

Well, now. So far we've got essays on the existence of Bigfoot, some history of Bigfoot, some rants against Bigfoot, and some space alien vs. Bigfoot ramblings, but nobody has reported seeing a Bigfoot in the flesh yet.:popcorn:

Wrong wrong wrong. The R51 is not like Bigfoot. That's a really unfair comparison.

The R51 is like the 80mpg carburetor. It is too good a product, so "they" won't allow it on the market. If people could buy an R51, they would never need another gun, and would not need to practice because the pistol points so perfectly. So the gun companies and the ammo companies conspired together to bury the technology.

Hey I like my Model 51, and would like an "R53" someday. So I'm watching for the R51 if it ever happens.

[Petrol & Powder]

Wrong wrong wrong. The R51 is not like Bigfoot. That's a really unfair comparison.

The R51 is like the 80mpg carburetor. It is too good a product, so "they" won't allow it on the market. If people could buy an R51, they would never need another gun, and would not need to practice because the pistol points so perfectly. So the gun companies and the ammo companies conspired together to bury the technology.

Hey I like my Model 51, and would like an "R53" someday. So I'm watching for the R51 if it ever happens.

:bigsmyl2:

[Petrol & Powder]

I always thought it was the 100mpg carburetor that was purchased by the nebulous "they"... :wink:

[Love Life]

Yes, quality costs. People look at cost over quality, and this leaves manufacturers 2 options. Go high end, or meet minimum functional/quality/finish requirements to keep cost low and move volume.

Quality costs and cheap isn't always cheap.