Don't see too many of these--the predecessor of the PX4

Oooh, and it's a .45! Nice!

quote:

Don't see too many of these

Because they were a flop.

One of my favorites

It was not a commercial success, but that doesn't make it a bad gun. The rotating barrel design is interesting, if in my experience not the magical cure for recoil that some tout it to be. They have typical Beretta quality and smoothness, and are good shooters. Maybe not as aesthetically pleasing as a 92, and a bit blocky and top-heavy, but they don't give up anything in the quality or accuracy department.

A big complaint about the Cougars is that they didn't share mags with the 92 series, but that's not a factor with the .45 as the 9x were never offered in .45 anyway.

One thing to note...they like grease on the locking lugs of the barrel and locking insert. Oil can evaporate or migrate away from those surfaces, and shooting them dry can cause damage.

I went through a Cougar phase, they are good guns. Beretta loves to shoot themselves in the foot though. Not sharing 92 mags was dumb as shit. Guys will say it was an AWB thing but it was still stupid. They had a better safety decocker design. On these, unlike 92’s, you can easily remove one piece in there and convert to a decocker only. It’s kind of brilliant. No conversion kit nonsense. I converted all my Cougars to decocker “G” only.

I have 3 8357s. Love them but hey I'm not a full cool kind of guy...just kinda.

I've had mine since 2007. Fun gun to shoot.

They remind me of the Walther P88 in the way they didn’t become widely adopted but were really good guns. I think these came out during the simple and cheap revolution. Glocks changed the world that way and about when the P88 and the Cougar hit the scene. Since then all new gun designs have to compete with Glock (simple and cheap) for contracts. These, of course are generalizations and dates are approximate since I’m too busy to assemble exact analyses but you get the point. This gun was a nice piece in the wrong era. I’ve had one in 45acp since 03 iirc.

Once Beretta dropped the Cougar in 2004 in favor of the PX4 line, production and sale of the Cougar line of handguns - including the 8045F - was shifted to Stoeger, a subsidiary of Beretta. Beretta's production tooling for the Cougars were shipped to Stoeger's factory in Turkey, and they continues to produce Stoeger Cougars until about 2018.

https://www.stoeger.com.tr/8045f-en

It's a shame it never took off but like others have said it had many issues-mag. compatibility with 92 series, aesthetics, and started during the mag ban which only allowed for 10 round mags for the gun. I had a 9mm Cougar and it was a soft shooting,very accurate pistol although a little on the ugly side. 92 series mags could be used with it but you had to cut another notch on the magazine for mag. release.

Shane on the Shield Carried one.

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Originally posted by jjkroll32:
Shane on the Shield Carried one.

Which is accurate, since the Beretta Cougar 8045 was on the LAPD's authorized duty gun list from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, though it was apparently never a very popular option.

I maintain the Model 8000 Cougar was not very popular due to the timing of its release around 1994 when it went from development to production in 1995. The Crime Bill of 1994 limited mag capacity to 10 rds which pretty much put a crimp in the popularity of the Cougar.

Beretta's PX4 Compact Carry, basically a polymer framed Model 8000 L in 9mm is immensely popular today. Locating one in that caliber is not easy.

quote:

Originally posted by BlackAgnes:
Don't see too many of these...

We used to in NC, where the 8045 was standard issue for the Highway Patrol. I think that lasted a few years, then they went on the market as surplus, unless the Trooper wanted it. A friend had one, a fine pistol IMO.