CZ Yearbook 2019 /eng

36 | | 37 CZ SHADOW 2 ORANGE MAKING CZ’S SPORT SPECIAL EVEN MORE SUPERB! 2019 brings some excellent news to the fans of high-quality competition pistols in 9 × 19 calibre – the popular CZ SHADOW 2 model gets an upgrade in the ORANGE version. If you have been following CZ for a while, you might know that the company has always had reservations on whether or not to customize. This isn’t a unique concern, the issue interests many renowned fire- arms manufacturers around the world. For a large factory that churns out hundreds of thousands of firearms in seri- al production, having its own tuning centre is not as easy or as justifiable as customers might think. The root of this is a completely different style of work that does not easily mesh with mass production. In the 1990s, when CZ be- gan producing the f irst f ine- ly-tuned pistols for IPSC, it was considered a somewhat pres- tigious venue and a good way to ensure work for the proto- type development workshop during idle periods. The idea of a custom shop kept cropping up now and again but never with any immediate priority. Only in the latest era that be- gan in 2006, the Uherský Brod company gradually discovered a way how to satisfy the needs of customers yearning for fine- ly-tuned specials while not slowing regular serial produc- tion that was in full swing. Nowadays, various customized and finely-tuned CZ guns are mostly created in collabora- tion with a carefully sourced outside supplier, on the ba- sis of exact specifications pre- scribed by Česká zbrojovka, primarily using parts manu- factured in the mother factory where the f inal inspections take place. This process has also been used for the manufacture of CZ ORANGE pistols. Let us re- mind ourselves that models bearing this name appeared on offer in Česká zbrojovka for the first time in 2012, orig- inally just to bring out a little extra something. However, the enthusiast ic response f rom customers made these custom grade pistols with un i que orange e l ement s a permanent f ixture in the CZ portfolio. And obviously so successful that it has encour- aged the company to come up with more and more vari- ants in other models. The wonders of a barrel bushing The latest addition to this sig- nature series is the CZ SHAD- OW 2 ORANGE. When see- ing this gun for the first time, some might have the feeling of déjà vu – and rightly so. This product was unveiled for the f irst time in September 2016 at the international journalist meeting organized by CZ, and its photographs subsequent- ly appeared in many special- ized magazines. At that time it wasn’t called ORANGE, but it caught the attention of many sport shooters who were sor- ry to see this gun go on the back burner as high demand focused production on the standard CZ SHADOW 2. Nevertheless, in 2019 the CZ SHADOW 2 ORANGE has at