Any time discussion of the Third Gen Smif autoloaders comes up on social media, someone will pine for their reintroduction, but it's just not going to happen, at least on any large scale.
Even if they still had the tooling (and I'm not entirely sure they do), the costs would be prohibitive. The 3rd Gen Smiths, even with every short cut they could try, were still more expensive to build than the classic P-series Sigs.
And they were very well-built guns. The fit and finish on an early 5906 or 1066 is easily as good as a Kimber 1911. Flats were flat, radiuses even, the fit between major components like slide/frame and barrel/slide was easily as good as what you'd see on, say, a nicer Kimber these days. They were expensive to build and fiendishly complex internally when compared to simpler, newer designs. But American consumers were conditioned to look at "imported = luxury" and "domestic = cheap" so trying to sell someone an eight hundred dollar 5906 next to a P226 with the same price tag was like trying to sell someone a Buick for the same price as a Bimmer. (Never mind that the "Bimmer" in question had a slide that was a heavy-gauge stamping with a pinned-in breechblock; technologies pioneered by Sauer for last-ditch 'volkspistoles' in WWII. )
I generally sort autopistols into three eras. The first was made using turn-of-the-century machining techniques, where you took pieces of steel and whittled away everything that didn't look like a pistol. The second took large advantage of techniques like stamping and casting to bring manufacturing costs down. The third went as simple as possible, with striker ignition, toaster parts for internals, and injection-molded plastic frames. Also, the complexity of manufacture doesn't necessarily equate to reliability or durability or anything. The Third Gen nines and .45's were pretty durable service autos, but the complex internals meant the tens and .40's chewed up internals on a regular basis. (I mean, that was true to a greater or lesser extent on other guns, too, so...)
While they'd taken as many shortcuts as possible*, the Third Gen Smifs were definitely the last gasp of the first era of semiauto pistol design.
*The nylon disconnector, for instance, which apparently actually increased durability.
