A new Browning HP costs nearly $900 and has the same cast frame a Ruger would likely have, if it were ever to be made, and the Ruger would presumably cost far less.
Like the 1911, the High Power is pre-WW2 technology and simply requires more work, and more skilled labor, than goes into putting together a Glock slide with a frame built by some minimum wage Austrian drone pressing the start button on an injection molding machine (nothing against Glocks -- same/same for modern HKs, SW M&Ps, etc etc etc).
For the last long time you've been paying for Belgian laborers to build the parts and (cheaper) Portuguese laborers to assemble the thing. I don't see Ruger, assuming they stay true to the design, being able to pull it off for much less money using American labor.
Now, Springfield "An Imported American Tradition Since 1974" Armory could maybe work a deal with FM in Argentina like the one they have with IMBEL in Brazil for "their" 1911s and bring in new production built at South American labor prices and better distribution than the FMs currently get a less expensive quality product. Maybe they could even get FM to drop their production streamlining "improvements" and do real upgrades to the basic design (optional tritium Novaks or similar, return to the ring hammer design, improve the safety and hey, while we're dreaming, throw on a light rail too) in ways that FN Herstal just isn't interested in pursuing.
But frankly I still don't even see that being a money making proposition. The High Power is a niche gun unlike the 1911 -- John Wayne and John Dillinger never carried one. Five or six generations of GIs, including the millions who served in WW2 never handled it. The paid hacks and whores who write for the gun rags don't get all tingly in their naughty parts about High Powers the way they do every time Kimber, Springfield, or whoever roll out some "new" 1911 that's the last model with new hand grips on it, etc. Now I like 1911s (own two of them), even if I have zero respect for most gun magazine writers who endlessly flog myths and half-truths about the design on a monthly basis, and they're interesting in that they're this fascinating phenomena -- given price points that make them everything from an "everyman's gun" right on through to the ultimate gun snob's gun, depending on the source. It's kind of like if Kia, Ford, Toyota, Porsche and Lamborghini all made their version of the Ford Taurus or something.
But the High Power is something different. Aside from the 40 cal version and some modest tweaks to production through the years, it kind of still is what it is and what it always has been -- and here in the US that means a niche gun for a certain fan base. "An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age," as they say.
And, as others have noted, the real deal, FN roll marked pistols (or the Browning rollmarked marketing silliness) aren't that expensive -- stack them up against 1911s, a similarly labor and metal intensive pistol, and they price about right about where they should be expected to be. The only catch is you don't get much choice on details compared to the slew of 1911s out there and if you want to fine tune a High Power as a fighting gun -- well, then you're looking at gunsmithing and turning your production-1911 priced base gun into a custom-1911 priced fighting gun (or so -- my Cylinder and Slide reworked High Power was, all told, about 2/3rds what my Wilson 1911s each cost).
