Mauser M90 DA: Not Mauser and Not a High Power

Our book on Hungarian AKs, “Rifles on the Danube”, is available here:
https://www.headstamppublishing.com/danube-book

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Mauser firm was not in good shape. It had no new products, and its ability to survive marketing its name and legacy pistols was waning. Without much vision for the future, it turned to rebranding production from other companies, like Renato Gamba in Italy and FÉG in Hungary. From FEG they got the “Mauser Model 80” – a licensed copy of the Browning High Power – and the “Mauser Model 90” – a rebadged FEG P9R.

The P9R / Mauser 90 is often assumed to simply be a double-action modification of the High Power, but this is not true. The slide is almost identical is appearance to the High Power slide except for the decocking lever, but the frame has several important differences. The barrel lockup is taken from the S&W series of automatic pistols instead of the High Power, and the trigger mechanism is a stirrup around the magazine well instead of moving through the slide like a High Power.

In total, FEG made 26,000 of these pistols for Mauser. The plan was to sell them in Europe, but by 1995 sales remained poor and about 18,000 remained in Mauser inventory. In order to get rid of them, they were offered on the American market, where they were gobbled up by importers like Century between 1995 and 2001.