I’m not completely bereft of those newfangled automatics the young people prefer, it’s just that I’ve found very few that truly sing to me. Sig Sauers certainly do, and a few years back, I came upon a dark horse in the CZ-75.
The 75 is a magnificent gun. It’s accurate and I’ve yet to find ammunition that makes it choke. Once the trigger breaks in (and give it a chance to), it’s a phenomenal shooter, but it’s a bit short of ideal for a carry gun, being heavier than a steel revolver when fully loaded.
The P-01 is a newer design which addresses the shortcomings of the 75 while retaining everything that made it a great gun. The frame is now milled aluminum, and the pistol has a more convenient (and safe) decocking mechanism. Being designed for NATO deployment, it has a lanyard loop and possibly the most useless feature ever in a pistol: an accessory rail.
I hate rails on guns with a level of rancor I usually reserve for people who pass wind in elevators. They break up the clean lines of the gun, and they tend to drag on leather. I have no plans to ever mount a flashlight, bayonet, laser, forward grip or juicer to my pistol, so it is utterly irrelevant to me.
And yes, I’m very unhappy that Sig drank the same Kool-Aid and now puts rails on all their service guns.
Perhaps it’s time for me to just “get with the times” and accept it. Of course, with all there is to recommend this gun, I can live with the goofy rail, I suppose.
The grip has been thinned out a bit, and there are functional but unobtrusive serrations on the front and rear tang. The magazine release, slide catch and decocker are all enlarged for easy access, and the gun balances very well despite the lighter frame.
CZ is considerate enough to include snap caps with the pistol, which is a good thing, because it takes about 500 dry-fires and a bit of Eezox on the internals to smooth out the gritty SA trigger. Once done, the P-01 shoots easily as well as its full-size cousin.
That’s 14 rounds of Winchester Ranger SXT 127gr +P+. This stuff averages around 1300 ft/s, putting it on par with mild .357 Magnum loadings. There aren’t many guns I’d subject to this stuff, but being designed for some pretty harsh conditions, I figured the CZ could handle it.
Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed. Even with those loadings, recoil was easy to manage, and muzzle flip was minimal, perhaps 15° at most. The extractor is quite energetic, kicking all spent cases about six feet right of me. I expected no problems, and sure enough, there were none.
The grips are Needlewood, done by Sam Barbakov at Omega Custom.
(1) The exact NATO stock number is NSN 1005-16-000-8619 as printed on the side of the pistol.
(2) Stuff like this:
The pistol was required to pass a wide variety of tests:
The police required that the pistol ensure the highest level of comfort, an extended slide release was added as well as an extended magazine release and the trigger was reshaped to give a more consistent pull throughout the trigger stroke.
The pistol must be 100% reliable in extreme conditions, the following is a list of some of the minimum requirements.
Must be able to complete the following without failure:
4000 dry firings
3000 De-cockings
Operator level disassembly 1350 times with out ware or damage to components.
Complete disassembly 150 times, this is all the way down, pins, springs etc.
100% interchangability, any number of pistols randomly selected, disassembled, parts mixed and reassembled with no failures of any kind including loss of accuracy.Safety requirements:
Drop test
1.5 meter (4.9) drop test, this is done 54 times with the pistol loaded (blank) and the hammer cocked. Dropping the pistol on the butt, the muzzle, back of the slide, sides of the gun, top of the slide, in essence, any angle that you could drop the gun from. This is done on concrete and 0 failures are allowed! A failure is the gun firing.3meter drop (9.8) 5 times with the pistol loaded (blank) and the hammer cocked, This is done on concrete and 0 failures are allowed! A failure is the gun firing.
After these tests are complete the gun must fire without service.
The factory contracted an independent lab to do additional testing on guns that previously passed the drop tests. These pistol were dropped an additional 352 times without failure.
The pistol must also complete an environmental conditions test:
This means cold, heat, dust/sand and mud.
The pistol must fire after being frozen for 24 hours at 35C (-36F).
The pistol must fire after being heated for 24 hours at 70C (126F)
The pistol must fire after being submerged in mud, sand and combinations including being stripped of oil then completing the sand and mud tests again.Service life:
The service life requirement from the Czech police was 15,000 rounds of +P ammo!
The pistol will exceed 30,000 rounds with ball 9mm.Reliability:
The reliability requirements for the P-01 pistol are 99.8%, thats a .2% failure rate.
This equals 20 stoppages in 10,000 rounds or 500 Mean Rounds Between Failure (MRBF)
During testing, the average number of stoppages was only 7 per 15,000 rounds fired, this is a .05% failure rate, a MRBF rate of 2142 rounds! Over 4 time the minimum acceptable requirement.
The U.S. Army MRBF requirement is 495 rounds for 9mm pistols with 115 grain Ball ammunition.