The Escutcheon only came in one color and it didn't last too long. These first drop-down door units were very highly rated by Consumer Reports although some infidels on this site say that's because the other front loaders of this vintage hadn't rolled out their "A" games yet(and, unfortunately, I have to agree). These machines did have a big flaw: because GE hadn't thought about problems associated with a top rack that wasn't stationary, they hadn't extended the outer rack tines to keep glassware stems from hitting the sides of the tub as they were shuttled in and out and there was a lot of breakage. They corrected that for the next years' production but on these models the customer was warned via service bulletins, to load stemware in the middle of the rack.
IMHO, GE drop-down door models never achieved the capacity, features or value of their wonderful pull-outs. Hotpoint front loaders of this vintage were better machines. At the time, we all thought the top-loading aspect of those dishwasher was a pain, but after 50 years of using dishwashers, it just wasn't that much of a problem. Bending down is bending down ( Toggles?). Another reason I became very critical of Consumers Reports; they had an attitude that what was important to their testers was universal; not very scientific at all.
