I have owned one of these from new in 1981, which my dad bought for me as a gift, it is one of my favourite guns (ok, the wood is plain as hell and has very thick polyurethane finish to the degree the stock looks like it is made of plastic). This was the model that replaced the 57E.
In my opinion, the level of metal finish and quality of how everything fits together on this gun is far better than any lower grade Beretta made in the last 10 years.