Firestone Washing Machine
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Were Firestone washers made by Maytag?
No they were not.....they were made by a company called Beam....In the 1950's Beam designed washers were also sold by Speed Queen, Hotpoint (until circa 1956) One Minute, Coronado, AMC (not the car company), and a number of other makes. Maytag only made Maytag until they bought the Magic Chef/Norge consortium in the early 1980's.....PAT COFFEY
No they were not.....they were made by a company called Beam....In the 1950's Beam designed washers were also sold by Speed Queen, Hotpoint (until circa 1956) One Minute, Coronado, AMC (not the car company), and a number of other makes. Maytag only made Maytag until they bought the Magic Chef/Norge consortium in the early 1980's.....PAT COFFEY
Norge was bought by Maytag because of criminally stupid management. Maytag thought they could get away with not designing and building a large capacity toploader by buying Norge/Magic Chef and putting the Maytag name on the machines which were of a cheap, poor and outdated design. They were never made in Newton, but in the old Norge factory wich was also old and outdated and needed to be rebuilt, which is why Maytag got it for such a cheap price. So they got large capacity machines that destroyed their reputation for dependability and forced the company out of business. The workers got jack shit and the management got golden parachutes.
I don't think Maytag's demise can be solely attributed to their acquisition of Magic Chef (Norge), yes maybe it was the beggining of the end. But there are a number of different factors including the Neptune FL washer and all the problems (and lawsuits) surrounding it, plus their acquisition of Hoover, Admiral and finally Amana. Then their reported loss of $9 million just prior to the take over battle, which was finally won by Whirlpool.
Kevin
Maytag - Wikipedia
laundromat
Well-known member
Fedders was the company Maytag bought that owned a few other companies like Norge, Magic Chef, and Admiral. Admiral's refrigerators sucked the big one and made it hard for Maytag to keep up their well established reputation in design, performance and dependability. They never learned to leave the previous failures (the Neptune was designed similar to the older combos thet had out in 1960 that were a flop) alone and start afresh. Their washers, dishwashers and disposals were the best ones made and they ruined it.
limitededition
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Widebyside
Don't forget the Wide by side another dismal failure and I agree with laundromat they kept trying to right failed designs
Don't forget the Wide by side another dismal failure and I agree with laundromat they kept trying to right failed designs
Widebyside???
What is that?
More info please.
It was almost impossible to get the refrigerator and freezer doors to align so that they were level across the top edge in the Admiral-made side-by-side. There was always a step up or down between them.
Decades earlier, Maytag bought their refrigeration products from Amana. I would not put Amana in a class with the other Fedders lines, although Amana was, like Maytag, a very conservative company. If any of you can remember back to the RRL-10, the first Radar Range with the smoked plastic door and woodgrain, there is an interesting story about that. It seems that someone at Amana, according to a dealer, had wanted to introduce a more updated style over the silver die-cast door microwave ovens and took the responsibility to be fired if the RRL-10 was a flop. The "L" stood for limited edition. After the fact, the ovens sold so well that an across the board face lift was done and Amana sales were much better, but upper management had resisted any change until they were faced with the success of the "L" model. Amana had some funny ideas about refrigerators and ice makers, but they were not turning out cheap crap on purpose like Norge and other Fedders lines. Anytime a corporation cares more about stock holders and board members than it does about offering customers quality, they are headed for trouble, unless they have never been known for quality.
In dealing with people who plunked down big bucks for the see no evil Neptune, they failed miserably when they refused to extend the 5 year warranty on machines when the boards started going at 3 months or 6 months beyond the warranty. People who had already put up with a lot of crap with their Neptunes (the problems with the wax motor for the door lock and only two struts underneath the tub so it lacked stability with unbalanced loads or the MAX EXTRACT cycle which only gave two tries at balancing the load for the final spin while the regular spin cycle tried 4 or more times to balance) swore off Maytag forever and those were generally formerly loyal customers or people with money to buy the best who had aspired to own Maytag laundry appliances. You can't comand a premium price when you are selling Maytag-branded appliances that are the same, or almost the same, as what they are selling at Monkey Wards but, oh dear, Wards was selling Maytag, too. Play TAPS here.
Decades earlier, Maytag bought their refrigeration products from Amana. I would not put Amana in a class with the other Fedders lines, although Amana was, like Maytag, a very conservative company. If any of you can remember back to the RRL-10, the first Radar Range with the smoked plastic door and woodgrain, there is an interesting story about that. It seems that someone at Amana, according to a dealer, had wanted to introduce a more updated style over the silver die-cast door microwave ovens and took the responsibility to be fired if the RRL-10 was a flop. The "L" stood for limited edition. After the fact, the ovens sold so well that an across the board face lift was done and Amana sales were much better, but upper management had resisted any change until they were faced with the success of the "L" model. Amana had some funny ideas about refrigerators and ice makers, but they were not turning out cheap crap on purpose like Norge and other Fedders lines. Anytime a corporation cares more about stock holders and board members than it does about offering customers quality, they are headed for trouble, unless they have never been known for quality.
In dealing with people who plunked down big bucks for the see no evil Neptune, they failed miserably when they refused to extend the 5 year warranty on machines when the boards started going at 3 months or 6 months beyond the warranty. People who had already put up with a lot of crap with their Neptunes (the problems with the wax motor for the door lock and only two struts underneath the tub so it lacked stability with unbalanced loads or the MAX EXTRACT cycle which only gave two tries at balancing the load for the final spin while the regular spin cycle tried 4 or more times to balance) swore off Maytag forever and those were generally formerly loyal customers or people with money to buy the best who had aspired to own Maytag laundry appliances. You can't comand a premium price when you are selling Maytag-branded appliances that are the same, or almost the same, as what they are selling at Monkey Wards but, oh dear, Wards was selling Maytag, too. Play TAPS here.
Actually....
When I was visiting the Wellington County Museum archives to try and glean some information about that unusual Dominion brand washer I found in April, I noticed that a lot of the Beatty Brothers (who manufactured the Dominion washer) parts and supplies lists mentioned 'Zenith' and 'Firestone' parts and badges.
I have to wonder, did Beam sell a patent to Beatty or license them to build their washers under the Dominion and Beatty brand names??
In Canada, that was the arrangement that the John Inglis Company made with Whirlpool and for years, us Canadians were buying Whirlpool appliances that were 'Made In Canada' versions of the Whirlpool models. Well, except my folks who always bought GE or Viking... LOL
When I was visiting the Wellington County Museum archives to try and glean some information about that unusual Dominion brand washer I found in April, I noticed that a lot of the Beatty Brothers (who manufactured the Dominion washer) parts and supplies lists mentioned 'Zenith' and 'Firestone' parts and badges.
I have to wonder, did Beam sell a patent to Beatty or license them to build their washers under the Dominion and Beatty brand names??
In Canada, that was the arrangement that the John Inglis Company made with Whirlpool and for years, us Canadians were buying Whirlpool appliances that were 'Made In Canada' versions of the Whirlpool models. Well, except my folks who always bought GE or Viking... LOL
norgeway
Well-known member
Norge..
Was fantastic, until they took the big brake off of it, after that not so good.
Was fantastic, until they took the big brake off of it, after that not so good.
Kevin
Maytags "wide-by-side" was 36" box with a zig zag between the fresh food/freezer compartments. The fresh food was wider at the top and the freezer was wider at the bottom. The point being, it gave you more room in the areas you needed it most. It was a nice idea but considering their issues with refrigerators at the time, it just didn't make things any better.
Maytags "wide-by-side" was 36" box with a zig zag between the fresh food/freezer compartments. The fresh food was wider at the top and the freezer was wider at the bottom. The point being, it gave you more room in the areas you needed it most. It was a nice idea but considering their issues with refrigerators at the time, it just didn't make things any better.
Fedders
Though this may be straying a bit off topic. Fedders back in the day was sort of like the classic Maytag. They used to make kick ass air conditioners with their round "weather wheel" vent. This design was originally designed by famed industrial designer Raymond Lowey. If you look at those A/C units you will notice their striking resemblance to the Lucky Strike Ciggy boxes and the Good And Plenty candy boxes. Some time in the late 60's Fedders started to cheapen their A/C units by first ditching the weather wheel for a rectangular two way directional vent. Still not bad looking. By the 70's their units were designed on the cheap like the boring plastic Emerson Quiet Cool units. However for a brief period prior to their demise or takeover by a German company they revived the classic "Weather Wheel" air conditioner. Though they did not update it for today's tough energy green standards. Those units still run today and are through the wall in many an old motel and apartment buildings.
Though this may be straying a bit off topic. Fedders back in the day was sort of like the classic Maytag. They used to make kick ass air conditioners with their round "weather wheel" vent. This design was originally designed by famed industrial designer Raymond Lowey. If you look at those A/C units you will notice their striking resemblance to the Lucky Strike Ciggy boxes and the Good And Plenty candy boxes. Some time in the late 60's Fedders started to cheapen their A/C units by first ditching the weather wheel for a rectangular two way directional vent. Still not bad looking. By the 70's their units were designed on the cheap like the boring plastic Emerson Quiet Cool units. However for a brief period prior to their demise or takeover by a German company they revived the classic "Weather Wheel" air conditioner. Though they did not update it for today's tough energy green standards. Those units still run today and are through the wall in many an old motel and apartment buildings.
whirlcool
Well-known member
I can't tell you how many of those Fedders units I saw growing up in the midwest. They were definitely ubiquitous, everyone seemed to have one. In the south Friedrich was the brand people had the most.
Good & Plenty candy was a upper midwest/northeast thing. I don't think it was ever available down here in the south. The same thing with "Chunky" bars.
Good & Plenty candy was a upper midwest/northeast thing. I don't think it was ever available down here in the south. The same thing with "Chunky" bars.
Maytag Wide BY Side
Was a very clever idea that gave you larger spaces for food storage where you most needed it. Unfortunately it was plagued with problems like MT and Jenn-Air refrigerators that were from the Admiral plant in Gailsburg Illinois. MT even spent around 150 million upgrading operations in Gailsburg, but they were more interested in trying to better the competition with stylish gadgets than building a great refrigerator worthy of the MT and JA names. The Admiral refrigerators were not horrible refs and at the prices that Montgomery Wards charged for them they and could even be considered fair values, but when MT slapped their name on them and DOUBLED the price the cheap construction and many design flaws really came to the surface.
MT did make two big improvements in the top freezer models, they dumped the flex-tray ice makers and went with WPs IM and they finely used a vertical evaporator in the rear of the freezer compartment to solve the defrost problems that had plagued Admiral for over 20 years [ MT even added additional heaters trying to get this stupid horizontal design to work ]. But these two changes were about the extent of the progress even though they claimed that they had the only condenser that NEVER needed cleaning [ they kept it in the back where it could not be cleaned easily ] and I will never forget their other great innovation [ described to us at a big sales meeting ] that they had the ONLY Refrigerator that NEVER needed the exterior waxed, WOW, [ they knew that the refs would not last long enough to be worth waxing, LOL ].
But to MTs credit they closed the Gailsburg factory after they had purchased Amana and MT was doing the right things to survive and it was really the stock holders that killed Maytag, if the stock holders had waited just one or two years MT would have pulled through and the stockholders and US appliance buyers would have been much better off today.
Maytag's downfall and demise is a classic American story of corporate mismanagement, the company should have never tried to go head to head against GE, Whirlpool and Frigidaire, MT could have survived very nicely as a quality builder of higher end appliances and the company could have remained as a strong # 4 appliance builder in the North American market.
Was a very clever idea that gave you larger spaces for food storage where you most needed it. Unfortunately it was plagued with problems like MT and Jenn-Air refrigerators that were from the Admiral plant in Gailsburg Illinois. MT even spent around 150 million upgrading operations in Gailsburg, but they were more interested in trying to better the competition with stylish gadgets than building a great refrigerator worthy of the MT and JA names. The Admiral refrigerators were not horrible refs and at the prices that Montgomery Wards charged for them they and could even be considered fair values, but when MT slapped their name on them and DOUBLED the price the cheap construction and many design flaws really came to the surface.
MT did make two big improvements in the top freezer models, they dumped the flex-tray ice makers and went with WPs IM and they finely used a vertical evaporator in the rear of the freezer compartment to solve the defrost problems that had plagued Admiral for over 20 years [ MT even added additional heaters trying to get this stupid horizontal design to work ]. But these two changes were about the extent of the progress even though they claimed that they had the only condenser that NEVER needed cleaning [ they kept it in the back where it could not be cleaned easily ] and I will never forget their other great innovation [ described to us at a big sales meeting ] that they had the ONLY Refrigerator that NEVER needed the exterior waxed, WOW, [ they knew that the refs would not last long enough to be worth waxing, LOL ].
But to MTs credit they closed the Gailsburg factory after they had purchased Amana and MT was doing the right things to survive and it was really the stock holders that killed Maytag, if the stock holders had waited just one or two years MT would have pulled through and the stockholders and US appliance buyers would have been much better off today.
Maytag's downfall and demise is a classic American story of corporate mismanagement, the company should have never tried to go head to head against GE, Whirlpool and Frigidaire, MT could have survived very nicely as a quality builder of higher end appliances and the company could have remained as a strong # 4 appliance builder in the North American market.
Everyone in our area who had one of the classic mid to late 50s Fedders with the perforated gold mesh front and the Weatherwheel had a problem with the units icing up overnight. Atlanta is 1000 feet above sea level and back then, before it was as builtup as it is today, early morning lows were usually about 68 degrees except during the one heat wave we would get each summer when lows were around 80 and highs were in the mid 90s. There was no thermostat on the coils because the air was blown through them from the back of the unit and Fedders wrung high BTUs out of their units by staggering the coils so tightly that condensate running down the aluminum fins would start to freeze as outside temperatures dropped into the lower 70s unless you learned to turn the thermostat way warmer before you went to bed so you could not really do a great deal of cooling down the area during the cool night temperatures. The first time we ran our Fedders overnight, I was wakened by a clicking noise and it was the squirrel cage fan hitting the icing conditions. I woke daddy and we looked at the unit. Behind the Weather Wheel it was like inside our freezer, so daddy shut it off and we went back to sleep. After that, mom shut off the thing when she went to bed and opened the windows.
When we stayed at the Alamo Plaza Motel in Gulfport, MS, in 1956 or 57, we had our first experience with an air conditioner icing up. It was a older Fedders with the wheel in the center of the front and the air intakes on the side. As the room got warmer through the day, mom called the front desk. A porter came to inspect the unit and pronounced it "frozeup." "Frozeup" was one of those "up" conditions in the south, like "toreup" or "blewup" to describe broken machinery or "burningup" to describe a condition of extreme heat in people or things or the weather. As Miss Daisy said in the cemetery, "I'm about to burn up." They started to remove the filthy filter, which was the cause of the problem, when my mother said they had to first move the bed so that all of the dirt would not come down on it. That model used disposable filters that went in from the bottom on both sides. That trip was my brother's and my first exposure to hermit crabs which we thought were great wildlife.
The other lovely thing about the Fedders was that until they put the solid front on them in the early-mid 60s, you could not direct the air to the right or it would be sucked back into the intake and short cycle the thermostat. This caused the compressor to try to restart before the pressure equalized and there would be two or three attempts with a distinctive deep hum that would last a couple of seconds, stop, then repeat a time or two before it restarted. I was always reminded of this at the start of the song, Summer In The City by the Loving Spoonful with those two solo organ notes that repeated two or three times before the rest of the band joined in. Most of the youngsters here were not born yet when it was popular.
Fedders called the concealed controls the Weather Bureau which was sort of a pun not caught by most. It could just as easily have been called the ice box. [this post was last edited: 5/29/2013-09:19]
When we stayed at the Alamo Plaza Motel in Gulfport, MS, in 1956 or 57, we had our first experience with an air conditioner icing up. It was a older Fedders with the wheel in the center of the front and the air intakes on the side. As the room got warmer through the day, mom called the front desk. A porter came to inspect the unit and pronounced it "frozeup." "Frozeup" was one of those "up" conditions in the south, like "toreup" or "blewup" to describe broken machinery or "burningup" to describe a condition of extreme heat in people or things or the weather. As Miss Daisy said in the cemetery, "I'm about to burn up." They started to remove the filthy filter, which was the cause of the problem, when my mother said they had to first move the bed so that all of the dirt would not come down on it. That model used disposable filters that went in from the bottom on both sides. That trip was my brother's and my first exposure to hermit crabs which we thought were great wildlife.
The other lovely thing about the Fedders was that until they put the solid front on them in the early-mid 60s, you could not direct the air to the right or it would be sucked back into the intake and short cycle the thermostat. This caused the compressor to try to restart before the pressure equalized and there would be two or three attempts with a distinctive deep hum that would last a couple of seconds, stop, then repeat a time or two before it restarted. I was always reminded of this at the start of the song, Summer In The City by the Loving Spoonful with those two solo organ notes that repeated two or three times before the rest of the band joined in. Most of the youngsters here were not born yet when it was popular.
Fedders called the concealed controls the Weather Bureau which was sort of a pun not caught by most. It could just as easily have been called the ice box. [this post was last edited: 5/29/2013-09:19]
