Whitney ~ Wolverine ~ .22 LR

The Whitney Wolverine is a semi-automatic .22 LR caliber pistol created in 1956. Notable for its advanced, "space-aged" looks and then-new aluminum construction, it has a 10-round magazine. The Wolverine was engineered by Robert Hillberg, who learned about aluminum casting during WWII while working with aircraft guns and later became research engineer for High Standard Manufacturing Company. Only 13,371 of these .22 semi automatic pistols were made in its short period of production between 1956 and 1958. Its name, Wolverine, was after Hillberg's favorite football team, the University of Michigan Wolverines. The Whitney name was used because the factory was located near the old Eli Whitney factory site. A victim of extremely poor marketing in the beginning, financial problems and then being under priced by $2.00 by both Ruger and Colt with their new semi-automatics .22, the company was doomed. Two companies have attempted to revive the Wolverine model originally design by Whitney, with one of them having succeeded. Olympic Arms manufactured and sold a version with a polymer frame, instead of aluminum. The Olympic Arms version of the Wolverine model Whitney pistol began production in 2002. However, as of January 2017, Olympic Arms had shut down production and the Wolverine is no longer available. Samson Manufacturing Corporation had planned on creating their own version, but it never came to fruition. Samson stated that they had the original molds and dies, and had a huge inventory of original parts from the 1950s that they obtained from the original manufacturer. This is a very nice example that is in great shape and comes with the original box. The box is in very nice condition also. A coll collectable that you rarely see.