I am not that much up on Piepers but they made many grades of guns from some very inexpensive ones to some High grade ones. The cheaper ones likely hurt their image which is unfortunate, they made some very nice guns.
Pieper incidentally was the originator of the "Mono-Block" although he simply called it a steel breech piece. I am not certain but highly suspect Beretta coined the name mono-block.

Miller/TN
I Didn't Say Everything I Said, Yogi Berra