Epic New 1911 From Revolutionary Pistol Maker Ed Brown

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Elements

The .45 ACP Kobra Carry is a Commander-size Model 1911. As such, it has a 4.25-inch barrel. The barrel’s muzzle is precision crowned and recessed. The sample we received for this review is all stainless steel and has beautiful cocobolo wood grips. The grips are checkered in a double-diamond style, sport the Ed Brown “EB” logo on both sides, and are held in place by stainless-steel Allen-head screws. The model name is not marked anywhere on the pistol, but “25th Anniversary” is tastefully engraved on the right-hand side of the frame’s dustcover area in a fine script font. It’s very classy in my opinion.

The slide has a smooth, rounded top, and the front edges near the muzzle are beveled. The ejection port is lowered and flared. The mechanical design of the Kobra Carry utilizes a barrel bushing and a full-length recoil spring guide rod assembly with a flat wire spring. Both sides of the rear of the slide feature Snakeskin texturing where traditional grasping grooves would be on a typical Model 1911. I’ll get to a more detailed description of the Snakeskin treatment a little later in this report.

The all-black combat-style rear sight is dovetailed into the top of the slide and held in position by a lock screw. The front sight also is dovetailed into the top of the slide, and it is a Trijicon HD XR sight that has a tritium dot surrounded by an orange high-visibility ring. The rear sight has a square notch and a smooth face.

All internal parts (including a stainless-steel extractor and ejector) and the ventilated trigger, the extended manual thumb safety, the slide stop, the hammer, the beavertail grip safety, and the hex-head magazine catch lock are Ed Brown original parts. Producing his own high-quality Model 1911 parts is really what started Ed’s journey back in the 1980s that led to his company becoming one of the most respected firearms-manufacturing firms in the world. The grip safety has the famous “speed bump” with three horizontal grooves. The tip of the slide stop’s pin is flattened and recessed on the right-hand side of the frame. The trigger’s face is grooved, and so is the hammerspur.

The trigger pull on our pistol averaged 4.5 pounds over a series of five measurements with an RCBS trigger pull gauge. As you’d expect on a pistol from the firm that was founded by one of the most famous custom gunsmiths in the country, the trigger breaks crisply and cleanly, with no overtravel (the trigger does incorporate an overtravel screw, but I didn’t need to adjust it) and a slight amount of take-up.

To my way of thinking, the grip frame is the heart of the Kobra Carry because it is here that the two unique features really come into play. The Bobtail round-butt treatment, with the back corner of the grip frame and mainspring housing being rounded, provides a very comfortable grip. Plus, it makes the pistol easier to conceal. What Sheriff Wilson wrote in that 2002 article remains true today. He said, “Instead of the back edge gouging into the shooting palm, as it does on the standard 1911 pistol, Brown’s round-butt treatment allows for a better ergonomic fit and tighter grip. You would not think that removing so little steel would make such a difference, but you really have to feel it to fully appreciate what the Bobtail round butt does for the shooting grip. Oh, by the way, removing this corner from the 1911 pistol does away with that telltale outline on your coat or other covering garment for concealed carry. It feels better and conceals better.”

The Snakeskin texture treatment goes hand in hand with the Bobtail round butt and really helps establish a tight, secure shooting grip. As the photos reveal, it has a fish-scale sort of look to it. What they don’t show is the treatment isn’t as sharp as the old-style stippling that was popular for Bullseye competition shooters in the 1970s and 1980s. However, it still gives a very positive grip during fast, defensive shooting drills. Like the Sheriff said, “The Snakeskin treatment looks good enough to be ornamentation, but don’t be fooled—it is extremely useful and functional.” In addition to the Bobtail and Snakeskin texturing, the entire pistol is dehorned—meaning there are no sharp edges anywhere—to facilitate easy drawing, handling, and reholstering.

The gun came with two stainless-steel magazines that are stamped “EB” on the lower right-hand corner. Each magazine holds seven rounds of .45 ACP ammunition, and each has a flat, antitilt follower. The baseplates are drilled and tapped for installing bumper pads, and each side of the bodies has witness holes. As most readers know, the heart of a semiautomatic pistol is the magazine. If the magazine doesn’t function properly, the pistol won’t function reliably. A lot of development has gone into improving the Model 1911’s original magazine, and Ed Brown Products is a company that’s gotten it right.

Our sample pistol also came with an Ed Brown bushing wrench; four magazine bumper pads (two different thicknesses) and the screws to install them; an Allen wrench; a bottle of “ED” lubricant; a cable/padlock-type gun lock; an owner’s manual; a 25-percent-off coupon for Nosler ammunition; and a soft, black zippered gun case with the “EB” logo embroidered on the large outside pocket. There are two inside pockets and several internal slots for extra magazines.

Performance

When I evaluate a Model 1911, in addition to always checking the trigger pull, I also check how tightly the slide and barrel lock up. In these respects, the 25th anniversary Kobra Carry was outstanding. The pistol’s slide didn’t move at all from side to side when in battery, and the barrel didn’t budge even a tiny bit when I pushed down on its hood.

As for the pistol’s accuracy, well, it was outstanding too. Overall average accuracy for seven .45 ACP factory loads fired from a sandbag benchrest at 25 yards was 2.64 inches. That’s for three, five-shot groups with each load. All of the ammunition was loaded with 230-grain bullets of various styles.

As you can see from the accompanying chart, the ammunition that came in first place for the most accurate was the Browning 230-grain JHP load. It averaged exactly 2.00 inches for its three, five-shot groups. All seven loads tended to shoot low and left about 3.0 inches at 25 yards for me, but of course, that’s an individual thing and most likely will differ from shooter to shooter.

After completing the accuracy shooting, I did a bit of offhand shooting, using a swinging steel plate, synthetic bouncing ball and bouncing jack targets, and Shoot-N-C silhouette targets. The Kobra Carry didn’t miss a beat during all that shooting. It pointed naturally, was comfortable to shoot, and put all shots on target where I wanted them to hit.

After wrapping up the shooting for this report, I learned that Ed Brown Products has another new version of the Kobra Carry. It’s a multicaliber setup and comes with everything a shooter needs to swap from .45 ACP to 9mm Luger. It comes with the complete .45 ACP upper and magazine as well as a complete EVO 9mm upper, with a thinned-down slide, a 4.0-inch bull barrel, the firing pin assembly, the ejector, the slide stop, a flat wire recoil system, and a 9mm magazine. The 9mm EVO slide is finished in black Gen 4 coating, and it is milled for mounting an optic, and in fact, it comes with a Holosun 320 SCS green-dot sight already installed. The MSRP of the Dual Caliber Kobra Carry is $4,995. Also, our sources at the company told us that there will be a fully engraved version of the Kobra Carry sometime down the road, and it will be a regular cataloged item. Further details are yet to come.

25TH ANNIVERSARY KOBRA CARRY SPECS

• MANUFACTURER: Ed Brown Products, edbrown.com
• TYPE: Recoil-operated autoloader
• CALIBER: .45 ACP
• MAGAZINE CAPACITY: 7 rounds
• BARREL: 4.25 in.
• OVERALL LENGTH: 8.0 in.
• WIDTH: 1.33 in.
• HEIGHT: 5.5 in.
• WEIGHT, EMPTY: 35 oz.
• GRIPS: Checkered cocobolo
• FINISH: Satin stainless steel, Snakeskin texture treatment on frontstrap,Bobtail mainspring housing, and slide
• SIGHTS: Black combat-style rear, Trijicon orange HD XR front
• TRIGGER: 4.5-lb. pull (as tested)
• SAFETY: Manual thumb safety, beavertail grip safety
• MSRP: $3,295

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