Sorry, I'm too lazy to read all the pages since Alex Pretti's death and I don't know much about firearms. Can someone explain what's going on here? It looks like it has a custom slide and the barrel is at a weird angle. Is it broken?
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I'm guessing you aren't too familiar with semi-auto handguns. Most modern semi-auto pistols are based around John Brownings short recoil operating system. With a Browning style pistol, when the slide is forward in battery the barrel and slide are locked together with a lug at the rear of the barrel on the top side which fits into a slot in the slide. When a round is fired the slide and barrel travel together in the locked position for a fraction of an inch until the barrel is prevented from further rearward movement (usually by part of the frame or a pin going through the frame and part of the barrel) and instead will tilt downward at the rear of the barrel and upward at the muzzle end of the barrel, thus unlocking the barrel from the slide and allowing the slide to continue moving rearward, extracting the spent casing from the chamber. The slide is under spring pressure and once it has gone fully rearward the spring will push the slide back forward, stripping a fresh cartridge from the magazine, and feeding it into the chamber of the barrel. As it continues forward, when it gets to the correct position the barrel will tilt back into its locked position in the slide and slide and barrel will travel forward together for a fraction of an inch until everything is fully back in battery and ready to fire once more. When the slide is locked back, such as an empty magazine or when the slide stop is manually engaged, the barrel will stay in it's unlocked and tilted position, which is what you are seeing in the photo.
There are several other operating systems for semi-auto pistols, such as rotating barrels, gas operated with rotating bolts like a semi-auto rifle, gas delayed blowback, roller-delayed blowback, roller-locked, flapper-locked, flapper-delayed blowback, simple blowback, and others. The famous Walther PPK was a simple blowback pistol, where the force of the gasses traveling down the barrel also push the spent cartridge case back out of the chamber and against the breach face of the slide, thus causing the slide to cycle, but this is typically done with smaller cartridges like .22lr, .25 ACP, .32 Auto, and .380 Auto. With a larger cartridge like 9mm Para, which is what Pretti's SIG P320 was chambered in, a more complex locked breach system such as the Browning Short Recoil system is required to ensure the gasses from firing the cartridge have lowered to a safe level before the firearm cycles. Otherwise harm could come to the shooter.
The tan color, as others have said, is nothing special. Most manufacturers offer pistols, rifles, shotguns, etc. in different finishes and colors. This is something that goes back to the 19th Century when manufacturers like Colt and Smith and Wesson would offer finishes like nickel plating, gold plating, and charcoal blueing as an option on their products on top of the basic blueing. Nowadays tactical and military styled firearms are most popular, so tans, browns, greens, and even full multi-color camouflage patterns are all the rage, along with basic black or grey.
There really is nothing all that special or even custom with Pretti's P320. It's just a fancier, more feature rich factory made variant of the basic bitch SIG-SAAR P320.
