My first 1911 was a Colt 1991A1 that I picked up for $375 for a gun shop. The gun was hardly used and I don’t believe it was ever shot. Every 1911 that I own has been had for under $400. I have had maintenance issues with my Colt 1991A1, but I believe the gun has well over 10,000 rounds through it and I’ve made a few customizations to improve it. I miss my gunsmith, but he did mess up something on the gun when I took it to him to have the feed ramp polished. When he was polishing the feed ramp he hit the slide stop and put a niche in it that I noticed immediately after test firing that the gun would not lock back. He found the mistake was his and fixed it, but I thought that it was a good time to replace the slide stop with an extended one. When I put Hogue gun grips on Colt, it made the grips a little fatter and it was a little difficult to hit the slide release with my thumb.
I messed around with polishing the feed ramp and using Wilson Combat magazines and noticed a good improvement in feeding SWC and HP ammo, but I was still not happy with it not running flawlessly. At this point, I don’t care, I’ve seen enough junks of wood fly out of the back of backstops to notice the difference between a 45acp and 9mm ball ammo to know that one type of ball ammo is better than the other. I would never use 9mm ball in a defensive situation, but a 45acp is fine by my book. I have also noticed absolutely no difference between Wilson Combat magazines that are 7rd vs 8rd. I have done the 8 +1 in the chamber on several occasions and never noticed any reliability issues as long as the gun wasn’t stored like this for very long. Even though I believe manual safeties aren’t the best type of device to have on a CCW gun, I think 8rds of 45acp ball ammo in a GI 1911 is not a negative.
I think there is just something about a 45acp that really makes firearms manufacturers do it right. There is always preference when it comes to which firearm you want, and due to modern technology, many firearms are very reliable under almost all conditions. The arguments about which caliber handgun has more stopping power will probable be a non-issue in coming years due to less lethal weapons like tasers ect.