byron2112, while it may not be readily apparent, from a business perspective, Colt does have the right priorities and advertising is not one of them, nor should it be one of them at this point in their financial life.
How are you supposed to know what they are selling other than t-shirts and belt buckles? The same way people have learned about products such the industrial revolution. You go to a dealer. Some major non-gun companies don't produce catalogs and rely on dealers to promote their products and many companies remain profitable by doing so. Don't get me wrong, catalogs are nice, but not essential.
Typical high gloss catalogs for guns are very expensive, especially when a lot of customers browsing for guns will take the catalogs home, look at them a few times, and then trash them. Also, Colt's main client base is not the individual, but the retailer. Colt relies on retailers to promote their products. Colt does maintain a web site that you did find and used. That is a form of electronic catalog. Web sites are much more cost effective than printed catalogs and can be updated more easily and at less expense.
Another reason why Colt is not investing large amounts of money into advertising like catalogs is because they are an established company with a long standing reputation. Between dealers and word of mouth, Colt reaches a lot of people.
Given Colt's current lines of items, the CCO you were looking for would not be found in a hard copy catalog anywhere since they aren't producing it now. In other words, a catalog would not have provided satisfaction for your frustration in finding out about that product. Companies usually don't waste lot of expensive advertising space on products they no longer sell.
As for what SamColtFan said about Kimber, he is pretty much right. Colt has seemingly gone the way of many American companies that found they could no longer adequately compete once new or retooled players entered the market. This happened with American cars that were on the downhill slide when Japen entered the car market with new and more efficient factories. Japan is now fighting to stay afloat because countries like Korea have newer production technology and can manufacture products in a more efficient manner. Colt got caught like American car companies. Kimber started up with newer and better technology that allowed them to produce guns with more standard features as well as some special features that Colt could not match and/or did not offer. I don't think Colt threw in the towel as much as maybe they just got hammered by a big roundhouse punch they never saw coming.
