From the Hip

The CZ-USA 75 semiautomatic pistol was introduced in 1975, and featured steel construction, a staggered magazine column and was chambered in 9mm Luger. It shared a similar size and weight as the famous Browning Hi-Power. Its design includes short recoil operation with a tilting barrel, locking breech, link-less-style locking cam, double/single action, external extractor and a frame-mounted safety. Uniquely, it features a slide that works inside the frame. Naturally, the CZ 75 is manufactured in the Czech Republic. During the past 49 years, they have built a reputation of being rugged, highly reliable, accurate, and durable and report significant sales.

Perhaps one of the most important endorsements that the CZ 75 almost immediately received was from noted military man, combat trainer and gun writer the late Jeff Cooper. He praised it for its quality, features, ergonomics and design, but wanted it offered in a larger caliber and it was eventually chambered in 40 S&W and 45 ACP (Model CZ 97B). Regardless, the CZ 75 has become widely popular and continues to enjoy brisk sales with civilians and militaries. But it has also enjoyed acceptance from action shooters with custom CZ 75 pattern pistols winning the world IPSC Championship. As of this writing, the exact number of pistols manufactured is unknown, but including variants, it’s around two million!

Like most guns, periodic changes have been made to further improve it. The first generation was produced from 1975-1980. At that point, the CZ 75 “Pre-B” was offered from 1980-1993, which had longer slide rails and a hammer half-cock position. Beginning in 1993 to date, the CZ 75 B (or second generation) was upgraded with a firing pin block safety, squared trigger guard and ring-style hammer. The model variants are extensive and include stainless, compacts, sub-compacts, competition, polymer frames and tactical.

Recently, CZ has offered a limited production version known as the CZ-USA 75 B RETRO. As its name implies, it is a retro version of the original. However, it still has the upgraded design and safety features of current models. A few of its retro features include a pre-B-style hammer spur (rather than the ring type), waffle-style grips and a rounded trigger guard. It is offered in a full blue finish, features a 4.6-inch barrel and includes two 16-round magazines. Naturally, the rear sight is dovetailed into the frame and features two white dots, while the front sight is staked and has a single white dot.

My sample pistol was a pleasure to work with. It came with a crisp, single-action trigger pull that broke cleanly at 5.3 pounds, but due to its crisp let-off, it did not feel that heavy. The CZ grip frame is ergonomic and due to its dished shape and high-position grip it is unusually comfortable, points naturally and is easy to shoot well. Despite its large magazine capacity, the grip frame is not excessively large and is gracefully sculptured. There is a proper beavertail to prevent the hammer spur from biting the web of the hand. Prior to formal accuracy testing, a few hundred rounds were fired to let the gun break in to better determine accuracy and reliability potential. Much of this shooting was from the seated back position with targets at 200 and 300 yards, wherein it displayed excellent accuracy with my handloads containing Speer 124 Gold Dot HP and Hornady 124-grain XTP bullets with various powder charges. Clearly, the cold-hammer forged match-grade barrel is a shooter!

Three factory loads were checked for accuracy, velocity and function from Federal, Hornady and Winchester, each load containing 124-grain bullets. Testing was conducted at 25 yards and with the aid of sandbag rests. The Hornady custom load contained a 124-grain XTP hollowpoint bullet listed with a muzzle velocity of 1,110 feet per second (fps), but actually clocked 1,123 fps and was easily the most accurate factory load tried. Three groups were fired, with five shots for each group that averaged 1.65 inches. The Winchester 9mm NATO load with full metal jacket bullet averaged 2 inches, which is still very respectable accuracy.

Moving on to handloads, new Starline cases were full-length sized, using Redding Titanium Carbide sizing die, neck-expanded and primed with CCI No. 500 primers that were seated .003 inch below flush. After charging cases with powder, bullets were seated to the correct overall length. As a separate step the taper crimp was applied that measured .373 inch (using blade calipers to obtain this measurement).

The Hornady 115-grain XTP bullet was pushed to 1,299 fps using 6 grains of Alliant BE-86 powder that provided a three-group average of just 1.70 inches. Loads containing the Nosler 124-grain Sporting Handgun jacketed hollowpoint bullet pushed to 1,212 fps using 5.5 grains of Hodgdon CFE Pistol powder averaged just over 2 inches. The Federal 147-grain Hydra-Shok bullet was pushed to 1,042 fps using 4.4 grains of CFE Pistol powder and grouped just under 2 inches. The CZ-USA 75 B RETRO seems to shoot any reasonable load well.

There were no malfunctions with factory loads or handloads. With nearly 50 years of proven service in wars and conflicts, action-pistol competitions, target work and many other applications, the CZ-USA 75 B has an outstanding record.