Springfield V-16 Long Slide Review

The Springfield V-16 Long Slide. It's an awesome concept in pistols. When I first saw a photo of one, I wanted one for myself. With a six inch ported barrel and a corresponding slide, it is a unique target pistol. The combination of weight forward of the hand, porting, and a longer sight radius supposedly combine to make a production pistol like few others. Thus, when I saw a used Long Slide on a dealer's shelf, I had to take a look.

It was an older example, stainless steel with plain checkered grips. It had a single sided extended thumb safety. As far as I was concerned, those were positive aspects. It also had a full length guide rod, and I'm guessing it was a two piece. The guide rod had a slot in the front, not a hex. There was no internal locking system on the gun. I was rather tired from shooting my own 1911s, and the dealer informed me Long Slide pistol shot low. I decided to purchase a bit of Fiocchi ammunition and take it for a ride. Unfortunately, I only had a cell phone camera.

I first endeavored to dial in the rear sight of the pistol. I quickly had the Long slide hitting just a little left of where I wanted. The trigger was a bit gritty with a hint of creep, but nothing that would not clean up nicely. The whole idea behind the V-16 Long Slide was to create a pistol with no muzzle flip, able to tweak the last bit of velocity out of a .45 ACP round or shoot .45 Super. The concept would have been great for a bowling pin gun.

I did not find the V-16 Long Slide to be any more or less controllable than my Government Model 1911s with an Ed Brown grip safety. I like the Ed Brown grip safety because it gets the web of my hand up higher behind the bore axis. The Springfield gun, with a lower cut beavertail, accomplishes the same task with a longer slide and porting.

The pistol was accurate. I fired five round strings in rapid succession into index cards. The pistol performed flawlessly, with no malfunctions. I ran 100 rounds through the behemothic pistol. I would have preferred a dovetailed fiber optic front sight. I'm not certain, but I think Springfield offered that on later Long Slide guns. The V-16 Long Slide was an interesting firearm, and I might have taken it home, except the dealer wanted $799 for this older pre-owned example. That was a bit much for me.