Savage’s 1907 was designed by Army Maj. Elbert Hamilton Searle, and in .32 it was a 10+1 gun that proved especially popular in Europe.
March 03, 2023
By Jim Dickson
Designed by Army Ordnance Maj. Elbert Hamilton Searle under patents issued to him in 1905, the first Savage .32 ACP guns were designated the M1907. Collectors will find at least 12 variations thereafter. They all featured Searle’s locking system. He used the torque of the bullet going through the rifling to slow the rotation and unlocking of the barrel lug a bit—enabling the recoiling parts to be made two ounces lighter than on a pure blowback-operated gun. He also used this system on his .45 automatic that competed with Colt in the Army trials that led to the M1911 being adopted.
It was available in both .32 and .380. The former fed from a double-column, single-position-feed 10-round magazine, providing a lot of firepower out of a gun that was just seven inches long and weighed 19 ounces. The 1910 price was a reasonable $15.
It had excellent balance and a fine trigger pull, and more than 270,000 were sold by 1928 when production was terminated. Among these were a lot sold to France for use in World War I. The Europeans always considered the .32 ACP full metal jacket with its excellent penetration a satisfactory military and police round, and it remained popular there as such until NATO standardized the 9mm Luger.
Bat Masterson, the famous Old West gunfighter, carried a .32 Savage when he went East to be a sportswriter for the newspapers. He made the extravagant claim that anyone with a Savage .32 automatic could beat any Old West gunfighter in a gunfight after Savage paid him for an endorsement.
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Back when it first came out, a lot of trappers used .32 pistols to kill what they had trapped as it worked better than the .22 Long Rifle, and thus it came about that the Savage .32 with full metal jacket ammo accounted for some bears killed when it was the only gun at hand when the trapper had bear trouble. Savage was quick to trumpet these successes in its ads.
The Savage .32 was the first pocket automatic I ever had, and it has never jammed or failed me throughout the years. I finally had to replace the shot-out barrel, but the rest of the gun is still all original and going strong. The Savage does everything you can ask a .32 ACP to do and does it well. It is a timeless classic.
The .380 version commands a premium, but you can find the .32 in the mid-$400 range for guns in decent condition.
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