Most shooters associate the Bersa brand with its compact Thunder semiauto pistol line, so it may have come as a surprise when Bersa introduced a new B1911 .45 ACP semiauto single-action pistol this year. Perhaps even more surprising to some is the fact that these 1911s are not built in Argentina, where Bersa is headquartered, but rather at the company’s new, state-of-the-art facility in Kennesaw, Georgia.
This is not, however, the first time Bersa has taken on the 1911. In fact, that’s where the brand got its start, if only tangentially. In 1958 a trio of Italian firearm engineers—Ercole Montini (who had worked at Beretta), Benso Bonadimani and Savino Caselli—set up shop not far from Buenos Aires and began making parts for Ballester-Molina.
Ballester-Molina’s best-known firearm was the Pistola Sistema…