For Christmas my mother gave me an Auto Ordnance 1911A1 Parkerized.  

Fit and Finish are excellent.  There are absolutely no blemishes, runs, or thin spots in the finish.  I can see no tooling marks.  The pistol seems to be of very high quality (which is not something AO was known for in the past).

General overview of the shooting:

Accuracy was piss-poor to start, but as the barrel started to get a little copper fouling in it the pistol became very accurate.  I went from not being able to hit paper at 25 yards to busting beer cans 30-40 yards away consistently.  While not match accurate, hitting beer cans at that range with a base model pistol is pretty good.

Reliability was absolute.  I only had one failure and that was attributable to the Wolf ammo.  A case split between the mouth and the extraction groove and wouldn't extract.  After pulling out the mag and dropping the slide on the spent casing I put the muzzle on the bench and gave it a good shove, yanking the case out of the chamber.  There was no damage to the pistol.  I did have one small problem with some of the mags not locking the slide open on empty.  That's not life-threatening, but it can be annoying.  It happened twice during the shooting, but both occurences were at the beginning.

Druthers:

The sights suck.  I like the GI-like build of the pistol (that's why I wanted it), so I'm willing to put up with the puny sights, but most shooters would probably need to replace the sights.

Also, the pistol ejects casings everywhere!!  Sometimes they shoot to the right a few feet, sometimes they go back to the right several yards, sometimes to the left a few feet, sometimes straight up, sometimes straight back into the shooters face.  However, my Remington Rand WW2-vintage .45 does the same thing (it likes to smack you in the face a little more than the AO does though).  Safety glasses are an absolute must when shooting this pistol.

Overall the pistol is great, tons of fun to shoot.  It appears as though AO has finally got their act together.

Remember:  you might be a redneck if you go to the shooting range to try your new Christmas presents!

Wow what a cool Mom.  All Moms should be as cool as that.

Supposedly AO is up in quality since Kahr took over, your experience seems to bear that out.  Congrats.

What a nice present from your mom.  I too own an Auto Ordinance.  Bought it about ten or so years back.  When they sent it to me it looked really well built and fit well.  As I was cleaning it before I shot it I noticed the barrel cleaned super easy.  Well it cleaned that way because the barrel had no rifling.  Sent it back and they sent another.  I moly coated the entire pistol and in the ten years it has never given me a bit of trouble.  With match ammo the pistol is super accurate.  Good luck with yours.   bybon