Auto Pistol of the 20th Century - Page Three

Page Three - The Most Underrated Auto Pistol

When the ST editors asked me to do a sidebar to my “pistol of the century” assignment to briefly discuss the handgun I thought was the most underrated autoloader, I was immediately intrigued. A lot of auto pistol designs, makes, and models have come and gone over the last century that didn’t quite make the grade, and many had very interesting features that deserved a better reception and wider popularity than they received. Then I thought, no, the gun I should pick is one that’s still available, that still has a chance to get somewhere in the American marketplace but just hasn’t yet been as appreciated here in our country as it deserves. So which currently available auto pistol design is most overlooked by American shooters? Framed that way, one pistol leapt immediately to my mind: the Ceska Zbrojovka Czechoslovak-originated CZ75 9mm and its other-caliber variants and descendents.

Connoisseurs of auto pistol design are already well aware of the CZ’s excellent features and need not be lectured as to why it deserves a much wider popularity in the American handgun market than it has so far achieved. Outside the US the pistol is already an indisputable classic—copied, duplicated, and used as a point of departure for dozens of other makes and models of guns manufactured in a variety of nations.

The near-global reach of the CZ design is all the more impressive in view of the fact that this gun was developed only 25 years ago, in the early 1970s, and until recently was not available to US consumers in its actual Czech-manufactured pattern due to federal prohibitions against importing firearms from communist countries, which is, I believe, the main reason it yet ranks here as an also-ran. American shooters were for many years familiar with the CZ only through imported clones and imitators such as the Swiss-made ITM AT-84, formerly imported by Action Arms, or the various Italian-made Tanfoglio CZ variants marketed at various times under a variety of labels by several different US importers and today available in the European American Armory’s extensive Witness line or the hybrid Tanfoglio/Israel Military Industries CZ-based pistol previously offered by KBI as the convertible .41 AE/9mm Jericho and later carried by MRI as the Baby Eagle in 9mm, .41 AE, and .40 S&W chamberings.

Some, indeed most, of these pistols were and are top-quality arms. But none were “true” CZs. Guns with the actual Ceska Zbrojovka roll stamp simply weren’t available until the passing of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist Empire. Then in mid-1994 Magnum Research Inc. (MRI) of Minneapolis became the exclusive US importer of all CZ firearms, and today CZ-USA of Kansas City, Missouri, distributes all CZ firearms in the US as a direct subsidiary of the parent Czech firm. I’m firmly convinced that if the CZ pistol had been available to our military evaluators as a U.S.-based design in the early 1980s when the Armed Forces was searching for a 9mm replacement for the Model 1911, it would have given all other contenders, including the final-choice Beretta, a strong run for the money.

I could go on for pages, but just let me say that if you haven’t yet had the opportunity to handle and shoot a true CZ pistol, you’re missing something good, and I am hopeful that now that these guns are directly available in this country their overlooked status won’t last. They deserve better.

Page One - Model 1911 - Auto Pistol of the Century

Page Two - Model 1911 History & Evolution

Page Three - The Most Underrated Auto Pistol, Metcalf's Top 50

This article was originally published in Shooting Times magazine in January, 2000.

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