Did Glock Ever Fail?

With the passing of Gaston Glock earlier this week, I’ve been reflecting on his remarkable level of achievement and the unprecedented success of his company. A self-made man who did not produce a firearm until the age of 52, Mr. Glock never retired from his company and personally oversaw it’s growth into one of the largest handgun manufacturers in the world. Finances have always been kept secret as it is not a publicly traded company, but I can only imagine how many billions the man must have been worth. So that level of success got me to thinking about whether he ever experienced failure:

This pistol also came in this week–my very first GAP model, and putting these two things together, I could say that the GAP cartridge might be the closest thing to failure that Glock ever encountered.

As many of you are aware and has been covered here many times over, Gaston’s initial thoughts on his firearm were that the model 17 was the perfect handgun and he would never have to build any other variations. It was several years before new calibers were brought to market and even the first few expansions of models were just variations of the model 17 (either shorter, longer, or fully automatic). But by early 1986 Glock Inc had been established as the US headquarters for importation and it became clear very quickly that the US market would be quite lucrative–worthy of considerable resources being used in research and development.

At the time, the US market was very much dominated by .45 ACP. The military used 1911s up until 1985, and while police were slowly switching over to semi-autos, revolvers in .38 spl or .357 magnum were still much more common. Many in the firearms community felt that the 9mm luger cartridge was underpowered and a “real” gun used the .45 or the .357. While we won’t debate that here, the US love affair with .45 ACP couldn’t be denied and the prevailing thought within the Glock company was that a .45 caliber model would far outsell even the tremendous sales of the 17/19.

Sidetracked with the .40 S&W cartridge for a short time, the company didn’t finish development of their first .45 ACP until 1991 dubbed the model 21. It was decided to use a double stack design like the 17, and while early prototypes were made with the same size frame, they proved to be un-workable and it was necessary to increase the size of both frame and slide in order to make the .45 safe and reliable. While the 21 certainly achieved those aims and continues to have many fans in the gun community (especially due to it’s 13 round capacity), the increased size made it a lot to handle for many shooters and sales never came close to matching the 17 and 19’s torrid pace.

For more than a decade, the status quo was maintained; large frame .45, small frame 9×19, but behind the scenes development continued with all ideas considered to try to marry the large caliber with the more comfortable frame. First there came a compact version of the .45 (the model 30–released in 1996), which was smaller overall but still held 10 rounds. However, the grip circumference and length of trigger pull were the same as the model 21 so it didn’t score a lot of points with the small hands crowd who struggled to grip the beefy handle. Next, in 1999, the model 36 was released and featured the same foot print as the model 30, but with a single stack magazine design. While fixing the issue of the grip being too girthy for many, the single stack magazine was only able to carry six rounds of .45 ACP. After years of being spoiled by 10 or 13 round capacity, the .45 ACP shooters still weren’t satisfied.

All the while, Glock toyed with the idea of mating a .45 caliber cartridge with the grip size of a model 17. One of the major challenges was the length of the .45 ACP cartridge so engineers got to work on what options they could take to shorten that caliber but keep the same ballistic performance. This was possible because the pressure generated by the ACP were much lower than those of other calibers so, in theory, you could cram the same amount of powder into a shorter casing, increase the pressure, and get the same ballistic performance from a shorter overall bullet.

But this hypothetical .45 caliber round didn’t exist in the year 2000 so Gaston Glock decided he would just have to make it. After years of development work, the model 37 was the first gun offered in a new .45 Glock Auto Pistol cartridge which maintained the larger bore .45 bullet, but used a casing that brought the overall length down to the 9mm level–thereby allowing the gun to use the same frame as the model 17 and magazines the same exact size.

As you may have noticed from the magazine picture, the only downside of this plan was the fatter .45 caliber cartridges could only fit 10 rounds in a standard size magazine. Undeterred by this small detail, Glock launched a HUGE marketing blitz that lasted a number of years. They believed at the time that their new caliber would be picked up and take the American market by storm just as their handgun had 20 years earlier.

This first model, and the later compact and sub-compact models 38 and 39, should be considered the single biggest “failure” of Gaston Glock’s long firearms career. I will add, of course, failure is a relative term. For many of us, the sales and income of the GAP line of pistols would be more than enough to satisfy us. But in comparison to the world domination of the other pistols/calibers the GAP line was a dud! For years, the company continued to pump the new caliber and believed it would eventually catch on–but 20 years later, it’s the red-headed step child of Glock pistols. While it’s still in production, there is almost no effort put into promotion any longer.

The ten round capacity was certainly one down-side, a lack of ammunition options and correspondingly high prices was another. Perhaps the most frustrating for early adopters was the dissonance of a “Glock 17 sized .45” that didn’t actually work with other Glock 17 accessories–particularly holsters. As you can see in the picture above, the .45 caliber required a beefier slide so the entire upper assembly is much closer in size to the model 21 while only the frame is sized like a 17 (and is actually completely interchangeable with the 17 outside of the ejector pin).

It may be hard to distinguish in the photo, but the entire slide is about an 1/8″ wider than a model 17. These factors combined to keep sales low and GAP models are still hard to come by to this day–most dealers will only special order them–and production isn’t on a regular schedule. Gen 5 models have not been released though Gen 4s did finally come around. For collectors, there really aren’t any notable variants to chase, unless you happen to be lucky enough to find a prototype model 37 that was marked “45 GLOCK” rather than the production version “45 G.A.P.”

Speaking of Gen 5s, this second picture shows the GAP slide next to a model 22Gen5 slide–and as you can see, the Gen 5 .40s adopted the thicker/beefier slide and have similar holster compatibility issues. Something to be aware of if you do venture into the Gen 5 .40 S&W market.

In this new, post-Gaston world, I do anticipate an uptick in Glock collectors. And as a collector, the GAP models have caught my attention so I can only theorize this will happen with others–perhaps Glock never failed at all, he was just twenty years too early–only time will tell.