Hell in a Handbasket

The 1911 was ergonomically designed, and feels comfortable in the hands of most people. It is accurate, rugged, and most enthusiasts think that it has an elegance about it that is very pleasing to the eye. It has been so popular for so long that there are thousands of after market parts and accessories available, so much that anyone with deep pockets and a great deal of time can fine tune their 1911 so it fits them like a glove.

The problem is that technology has passed the basic design far behind, leaving it coughing and choking in the dust left by advances in materials, bullet design, and manufacturing processes.

The basic 1911 design balks at hollowpoints because it was never designed to feed them. It usually takes some work by a gunsmith to get the gun to work with modern ammunition, and then (as Tam points out above in her last comment) the owner usually has to carefully select through trial and error a particular load that will function in their own gun.

All this tweaking and shooting takes money, although you can cut the cost down if you know enough basic gunsmithing to do some of the work yourself. Usually, though, it requires a skilled professional. Some gunsmiths actually specialize in 1911 work.

The majority of modern designs will feed hollowpoints right out of the box, will shoot more accurately than the owner can, and will last for thousands upon thousands of rounds without requiring anything more than minor repairs, if that. But it is virtually impossible to customize the gun beyond a few cosmetic changes like after market grips....

...or new sights...,

...and most people agree that they are not as ergonomically designed. This is why you get 1911 enthusiasts complaining about how modern grips feel odd, or how the trigger isn’t as crisp as their own favorite.

Another factor is price. As pdb points out in his post, the parts of a 1911 require a great deal more skilled fitting than modern designs. This not only drives the price up for the gunsmithing required to smooth out the reliability problems, but also the basic gun itself has a hefty cost. The bottom line is that a 1911 will cost about two or three times as much as a modern design that will protect you just as well.

UPDATE
Tam states that she used to have a similar opinion concerning 1911's, but she is now convinced that she is wrong. This is an extremely polite way, of course, of saying that *I* am wrong.

She might be right, and I could very well have missed something. She certainly has more experience with 1911's than I do. But I still encounter brand new, factory fresh 1911's that jam consistently when loaded with hollowpoints. This admittedly doesn't occur very often because the majority of my students simply cannot afford them, and so I don't see too many of the breed. But it does happen from time to time.

In all good conscience, I am going to have to stick with my first assessment that there is a 30% chance that a randomly selected brand new 1911 will be unreliable. That seems to be the way the cards have fallen in my experience, after all.