The Remington R51 Returns

2.5 Years After First Try, Remington Re-Launches Their Compact 9mm

It has been a bit of a rough ride for the Remington R51.  Two and a half years ago, the 200-year-old arms maker launched the R51 at SHOT Show 2014.  By July of that year, Remington had ditched the R51 project citing “performance issues” and scrubbed any mention of the R51 from the product lineups in their catalogs and online.

In their “oops” memo, Remington stated that “anyone who purchased an R51 may return it and receive a new R51 pistol, along with two additional magazines and a custom Pelican case.” They also thanked customers for their patience and promised that “the new R51 will be of the same exceptional quality as our test pistols” which, to hear them tell it, performed flawlessly.

Now, more than two years after the recall, the R51 is back and, hopefully, better than ever.  Remington announced the official re-launch of the R51 today with the following statement:

Because the R51 is so unlike any other handgun on the market, it posed unforeseen challenges in manufacturing when it was first introduced in 2014. Since then, our engineers have worked tirelessly to address the issues and extensively test the solutions, and we’re proud to say the redesigned R51 surpasses even our initial expectations.

Remington claims that the pistol has now been re-engineered from the ground up and thoroughly tested (again) to deliver “ultimate reliability.”  The 7+1 capacity R51 is supposedly designed to get on target faster and point more intuitively than other subcompact pistols on the market and thanks to the barrel and recoil spring configuration, have 25% less muzzle flip.

Updated features in the rebooted R51 include a precision-built fast-reset polymer trigger, a more aggressive and durable extractor design, enhanced recoil spring – which were among the issues with the initial pistol.