The Gun Digest Book of Sig-Sauer. Massad Ayoob

the first P226 grips. Checkered plastic was well liked by shooters and considered good looking. However…

       … SIGARMS felt that these stippled grips gave better grasping security, and they’ve been standard on the Classic models ever since…

       … and these extremely ergonomic, non-slip, and adjustable stocks are a keynote feature of the ultra-modern sig pro line.

      J. P. Sauer & Sohn (not “Sauer & Son,” as commonly misquoted in the U.S. gun press) is located in Eckenfoerde in what at the time of their link-up with SIG was known as West Germany. They had produced modern, high-quality pistols before WWII. Sauer stood ready in the early 1970s when SIG approached them with a design for a highly reliable, modern service pistol which could be cheaply mass-produced but whose reliance on sheet metal stampings would be antithetical to the “Swiss watch of the pistol world” image that had been so carefully cultivated for the P210. The SIG-Sauer collaboration was born.

      SIG absorbed the famous precision gun manufacturer Hammerli in 1971, and annexed J. P. Sauer in 1974. The SIG-Sauer concept was now locked in place.

      In turn, SIG-Sauer begat SIGARMS as an American branch for sales and, ultimately, manufacturing. Much assembly is now done at the SIGARMS plant in Exeter, New Hampshire, and slides and frames for the P226 and P229 pistols are now manufactured there. (That had been true of the P239 as well, and may be again, but at this writing SIGARMS tells me that they are so overwhelmed with production demand for the 226 and 229 that the P239 components are currently being produced by Sauer.) Hammerli, famous for the accuracy of their precision target pistols, produces the barrels. This is doubtless one reason why the SIG-Sauer guns are so accurate. By the 21st Century, the Mauser trademark, the exciting Blaser rifle, and assorted shotguns had also come into the SIG family.

      As the years went on, the European Community concept encroached more and more around and even in what some consider the last truly free country on the Continent, Switzerland. There were those among the decision makers at SIG who felt that the future did not bode well for either the political correctness or the profitability of the gun industry, which was only a part of SIG’s business. Enter Michael Lueke (pronounced Loo-Kay) and Thomas Ortmeier, German entrepreneurs who had become wealthy in the textile business, establishing the flourishing European firm TWE Technische Weberei GmbH & Co. Rifle enthusiasts and hunters, they at first wanted to purchase the rights to the ingenious Blaser hunting rifle. They ended up with a package deal, purchasing SIGARMS, Blaser, Hammerli, Mauser, Sauer, and the SIG assault rifle line. Those assault rifles are, in my opinion, quite possibly the finest in the world. It is Lueke and Ortmeier who are steering the SIG-Sauer pistols through their second quarter-century of triumphant performance.

       From The Author’s Perspective

      If we’re going to show the subject warts and all, we should do the same with the author. I’ve been shooting handguns for about 45 years at this writing, and SIG-Sauers, since they came out in the U.S. I’ve carried the P226 9mm and P220 .45 in uniform, and those and others as a plainclothes officer and off-duty armed citizen. I’ve taught the use of the SIG on four continents (including the nation of Switzerland). The very first Lethal Force Institute class I taught included one, a Browning BDA .45 in the hands of a capable student of the gun named Shelley Ivey, and the SIG has been a constant presence among the student body ever since.

      I’ve shot matches with them, legally carried them concealed in the four corners of the United States and in between, and monitored their large-scale use in more police departments than I can remember. I’ve taught shooting classes, and taken them, with the SIG-Sauer. I’ve come to respect these pistols. The first fully automatic firearm my younger daughter ever fired was a Sturmgewehr 90, the splendid Swiss assault rifle produced by SIG, when she accompanied me to Switzerland at the age of 11 while I was teaching there for the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors. When I was gone on long trips, the pistol my gun-savvy wife of 30 years chose to keep at her bedside was my SIG P226 DAO with an extended magazine loaded with 20 rounds of 9mm +P+. You could say that I have a lot of positive memories of SIG-Sauers.

      This book focuses on the development, selection, and safe and effective use of the SIG-Sauer pistols. There will be only brief attention paid to the other SIG handguns: the legendary SIG-Neuhausen P210, the sweet little Hammerli Trailside .22 which is so particularly well suited to smaller sport shooters, and the latest, the well-conceived and executed SIGARMS GSR 1911. The Mauser M2, which has been marketed by SIG, is left out entirely. Despite its excellent accuracy potential, its poor human engineering, second-rate workmanship, lack of reliability, and minimal projected service life don’t make it fit to appear in the pages of book concerning SIGARMS. I don’t have any say what goes into the SIGARMS catalog, but I do have a say on what goes into this book, which is why we’ll focus on the proven and enduring excellence of the true SIG-Sauer pistols.

      Massad Ayoob

      Concord, NH, U.S.A.

      November, 2003

       Ayoob testfiring SIG-Sauers.

Chapter 1

      The SIG P220

       The SIG P220

      A writer owes his readers a disclosure as to his biases toward this and his prejudices against that. Let me open this chapter by confessing that the P220 is my very favorite SIG A pistol, and indeed, one of my all-time favorite handguns. Extraordinarily accurate, very reliable, and easy to handle and shoot, one of the P220’s cardinal attributes is the cartridge for which it is chambered: the .45 ACP.

      The gun was introduced in 1976, the first of the SIG-Sauer line. Essentially designed by Schwetzerische Industriale Gesselcraft and manufactured by Sauer, it was chambered initially for the 9mm Parabellum cartridge and then almost immediately for .45 ACP and .38 Super for the American market. The 9mm P220 was immediately adopted by the armed forces of Japan, and of Switzerland, where it remains the standard military sidearm of Europe’s safest and most neutral country.

      In 1977, Browning contracted with SIG-Sauer to produce the gun under their name as the BDA (Browning Double Action). It was introduced as such to the American market, where it received a mixed welcome. The gun experts loved it, instantly appreciating its smooth action, good trigger, reliability, and ingenious design. The purchasing public was less enthusiastic. They associated the Browning name with traditional, Old World guns crafted of fine blue steel and hand-rubbed walnut. Here was a modern pistol with flat gray finish and checkered plastic stocks, with an aluminum frame and a slide made of metal folded over a mandrel. It was as if Jeep had produced a fine four-wheel-drive vehicle under the aegis of Rolls-Royce: though the quality and function were there, the “look,” the cachet, were not what the buyers associated with that particular brand image.

       The dust cover of P220 ST is grooved to accept accessories such as this InSights M3 flashlight.

      Before long, SIG had decided to import the guns into the United States on their own and under their own name, establishing SIGARMS in Virginia. (Much later, SIGARMS would move to Exeter, New Hampshire.) It was at this point that SIG sales apparently took off. If the public would buy a machine that was rugged and precision-made, but not fancy, from Jeep but not from Rolls-Royce, then