Hot water for Europe, and why we have front-loaders...
Mrx, I'm afraid you are a bit off the mark with your reasoning about cold-fill only. There are a variety of reasons why EU machines are (now) cold-fill, and one is the tradition that in many parts of Europe, central hot-water systems were comparatively rare until recently. The central-heating phenomenon was a feature of the 1970s and 1980s in Ireland and the UK alone. Prior to that, if houses had a 'central' hot-water system, it was generally based around a solid-fuel range cooker, or back-boiler (an open fire that has a water boiler attached) - just think of the endless quantities of Victorian and Edwardian houses in Ireland and the UK that weren't equipped with heating until very late in the 20th century. If the house was on the 'town-gas', hot water might come from a geyser over the kitchen sink. Also remember that rural-electrification was still just reaching parts of Ireland as late as the 1960s, in spite of having dated from the Siemens-Schuckert work at Ardnacrusha in the 1920s and 30s. Others might like to comment on other parts of Europe, but I'd wager that you'll find similar evolution there too. Mainland EU washers are often located in laundry rooms with cold-supply only (like the commonly found wash-kitchen in Germany aprtments), so dual-fill washers were impractical.
Cost of living and wages have had a major impact on this too - in the 1960s a industrial 'professional' starting salary was in the region of £1000 per annum. Nowadays an equivalent role would attract 40 times that amount. If we whizz back say 45 years, you'll find an automatic washer (like an English Electric or Hotpoint) cost about £105 in the UK - that's 10% of an annual professional salary!!! In modern terms, that would mean the equivalent washer should cost £4000 (that'd be a commercial model then...). So it is fair to say that automatics were out of reach of most people in the 1960s, and as such the twin-tub at reigned supreme from the 60s through to the late 70s. Hyper inflation the 70s also has an impact, but as production increased, costs could be saved and gradually machines got cheaper (add in mechanised production and you save a lot) - and the quality dropped. If you compare the engineering complexity of a 1960s Hoover Keymatic, English Electric Liberator or Hotpoint 1500 to a modern machine you'll see that every aspect has been engineered down to minimize cost. The separate chassis gave way to cheaper monocoque design, plastic replaced metal, concrete replaced cast iron and clutch drives gave way to simply bad balance control.
Towards the end of twintub production, the machines were 'unrealistically' priced for the market - almost £400 for a Hotpoint - way more than a cheap automatic, and a reflection that volume fall-off and build costs were the down-fall. Ditto the Hotpoint TL - just too expensive to build and still make a profit and not enough people to buy them. The market expects to pay very little, so manufacturers have to make machines as cheaply as possible to remain competitive and produce washers that cost as little as £150. You'd be amazed at what lengths manufacturers will go to keep costs low, and profit margins high - so if dropping a water valve and a hose pipe saves say £1 per machine and you make a million a year, you're saving a lot! As the former UK marques are now owned by EU (Italian to be precise) firms, 'manufacturing rationalisation and harmonisation' would mean it only sensible to eliminate regional features that are not required in the general market - so the UK/Ireland hot valve has gone! In order to smooth the change, we're sold this is a great advance, saving us lots of wasted hot water and money, and promising better detergent performance - this is marketing propaganda to cover up a very obvious cost-cutting/rationalisation exercise. As someone else noted, the German manufacturers are now offering hot-fill as an eco-option (who'd have credited it) - I bet we'll be asked to pay more for this!!!
As to why we have front-loaders - hard to say...in Ireland and UK in the 60s we had every possible type of automatic - agitator (Hotpoint, Servis and Frigidaire), top-loading h-axis (Phillips etc), and front loading, as well as the unique hybrid Hoover Keymatic. I guess the fact that the US Bendix machine as one of the first to be manufactured in mainland Europe had an big influence on design. Washers are generally fitted in kitchens or bathrooms in Europe, with only very much larger houses have laundry rooms, so with the advent of the fitted kitchen (again in the late 70s), under-counter washers won the day...
