Petrol & Powder
Well-Known Member
OK, Full disclosure here - I have a nostalgic fondness for the 1980's, particularly when it comes to the development of handguns.
Yeah, in the 1980's you couldn't get a CZ-75 unless you escaped from a Warsaw Pac country and a .380 Auto was considered to be a "powerful" pocket pistol; but there were exciting things going on.
In terms of history we had the stone age, the iron age and somewhere in the 1980's we entered the "wonder-nine" age ! If you were paying attention to gun tech in the mid 1980's, you were aware of high capacity DA/SA 9mm pistols.
Ben, one of the moderators of this forum, has a thread about a 40 S&W load and he mentioned his Ruger P-94 pistol. That brought back a flood of memories of the Ruger P-series pistols.
In the mid 1980's Ruger announced that they would be introducing the P-85 pistol. Now that was exciting in its own right but what was really exciting was the pistol would be inexpensive. This was big news ! In 1985 new Wonder-Nine pistols were selling for an arm, a leg, and maybe a gold filling you didn't really need in your tooth.
We waited for this new wonder-nine pistol that a working man could afford but it didn't arrive in 1985. A few years later the P-85 appeared in gun stores and by that time, the market had changed. While the P-85 was a solid and affordable pistol, the prices for competing pistols had become at least reasonable by the time the P-85 hit the stores.
Those early P-series Rugers remain solid values to this day. It's not a great concealed carry pistol unless you're wearing a parka. They're not sleek by any stretch of the imagination and there's some weird Ruger tech that goes with the package. There's no trigger pin; the trigger has trunnions cast into it that act as pivot points. The barrel lock up is a mixture of old school swinging link and new style SIG squared ejection port. (kinda like a 1911 had a one night stand with a SIG P220 and the P-series was the offspring). Most of the parts are stainless steel, but not all. It's just that Ruger different way of doing things. Never bad, often less expensive, usually stronger, but different than everyone else. If you've ever worked on a SAAB 900, you know exactly what I'm referring to. In the end - it all works.
I believe if Ruger could have got the P-85 / P-89 out to the public in 1983-1984, the market would have been dramatically different. We'll never know.
The P-series guns are out of production but like the Ruger DA Six-series revolvers, they're great guns and there are a lot of them out there.
Yeah, in the 1980's you couldn't get a CZ-75 unless you escaped from a Warsaw Pac country and a .380 Auto was considered to be a "powerful" pocket pistol; but there were exciting things going on.
In terms of history we had the stone age, the iron age and somewhere in the 1980's we entered the "wonder-nine" age ! If you were paying attention to gun tech in the mid 1980's, you were aware of high capacity DA/SA 9mm pistols.
Ben, one of the moderators of this forum, has a thread about a 40 S&W load and he mentioned his Ruger P-94 pistol. That brought back a flood of memories of the Ruger P-series pistols.
In the mid 1980's Ruger announced that they would be introducing the P-85 pistol. Now that was exciting in its own right but what was really exciting was the pistol would be inexpensive. This was big news ! In 1985 new Wonder-Nine pistols were selling for an arm, a leg, and maybe a gold filling you didn't really need in your tooth.
We waited for this new wonder-nine pistol that a working man could afford but it didn't arrive in 1985. A few years later the P-85 appeared in gun stores and by that time, the market had changed. While the P-85 was a solid and affordable pistol, the prices for competing pistols had become at least reasonable by the time the P-85 hit the stores.
Those early P-series Rugers remain solid values to this day. It's not a great concealed carry pistol unless you're wearing a parka. They're not sleek by any stretch of the imagination and there's some weird Ruger tech that goes with the package. There's no trigger pin; the trigger has trunnions cast into it that act as pivot points. The barrel lock up is a mixture of old school swinging link and new style SIG squared ejection port. (kinda like a 1911 had a one night stand with a SIG P220 and the P-series was the offspring). Most of the parts are stainless steel, but not all. It's just that Ruger different way of doing things. Never bad, often less expensive, usually stronger, but different than everyone else. If you've ever worked on a SAAB 900, you know exactly what I'm referring to. In the end - it all works.
I believe if Ruger could have got the P-85 / P-89 out to the public in 1983-1984, the market would have been dramatically different. We'll never know.
The P-series guns are out of production but like the Ruger DA Six-series revolvers, they're great guns and there are a lot of them out there.
