I do agree that a lot of Kimbers guns are not a good value. I don’t think their more expensive guns are worth what they ask.This is where the end of the argument would be, if people published failed rates because it wouldn't matter how popular something is. How popular something is in a way is irrelevant. KelTec being a great example. They are very popular lol but they make guns as if they are high on coke. Keltec has been the target of a strange supply and demand issue in the past. People still flock to them despite almost everyone in the industry knowing they produce junk.
For me, and after having hands on experience with a lot of 1911 brands, the one thing I have always given Kimber an F on is value. They have gotten better with asking prices, but for the asking price, they seem to generate a lot of controversy. They appear to generate more than others. Because none of us have access to failure rates, again, if more people in this thread say they had problems, that's relevant. Superficial, but sometimes superficial feedback matters.
Here's an example:
Sig p320. Compact. Tan frame, N/S. Excited about it. Take it up into the woods with some American eagle ball. Stove pipes every third round. I was shooting third gen Glocks for ages, without any of them having feeding issues. Even some getting fed sub gun ammo. Despite the logic of thinking about failure rates and getting a lemon, I said: f this POS.
Drove back into town. Traded it for an XD. XD shot everything.
For the same asking price (At the time) Kimber was a joke compared to an IWI 1911. A flat out joke.
Popularity does matter when it comes to statistics. If the failure rate= number of failures/number of guns sold, then we need to know how many guns there are in order to accurately compare the failure rate of one product to another. One online retailer posted their list of best selling 1911s, and of the top 20, 8 of them were Kimbers. If we only look at the number of failures, then if kimber produces 50000 1911s, and another company produces 10000, and the only thing that is looked at is the frequency that each one is brought in to a shop for repair, the smaller company could have a failure rate that is 4x higher than kimber and still be considered the better gun. If kimber produces 5x as many 1911s as another company, then it they have the same level of QC, then it would be reasonable to see 5x as many have problems.