Very interesting information. Thanks!
The "Brastempaire" washers and dryers were made by Brasmotor ordered by General Motors do Brasil S.A. It was a little before Frigidaire dissapear from Brazilian market.
Brasmotor was company who owned Brastemp, They bought several Whirlpool projects because the brazilian engineers simply weren't good enough to design a washing machine. Whirlpool ended by buying the company, and consequently the brands Brastemp and Consul, decades later.
The first Frigidaire refrigerators were made in the USA and the others were made at the Chevrolet plant in SP. The last ones were made by Prosdocimo and they had the oddest Frigidaire sign ever "Frigidaire - Made only by Prosdocimo under resquest for General Motors". Prosdocimo was their biggest competitor.
Nowadays that sign would look like "iPhone - made only by Samsung under request of Apple."
On the beginning, Frigidaire appliances were sold at Chevrolet dealers only. One could see a Chevrolet Opala next to a washing machine or a refrigerator.They were considered high end appliances that only really rich people could afford.
Years later, Frigidaire became much more popular when they started to sell it on ordinary appliance stores.
Strangely, Frigidaire had a front loader washer very similar to a Bendix washer-dryer combo. I don't know if it was made by Bendix or not.
That machine was huge! and the dryer was exactly the same model that matched the WO-65 washer. Even sold as a pair, they didn't match at all!
And even more strangely, here in Brazil Bendix had only two models: Economat (only the automatic version, with the scary rubber tub) and another model (i forgot the name, Power-something) that had a wobbling disk and a spin cycle.
Also, we never had Frigidaire top loaders, except one or other Unimatic WO-65 personally imported by really rich people.
Finding a Frigidaire appliance in Brazil, nowadays, is more difficult than winnin the lottery. Maybe one can find one or other refrigerator. but a washer or a dryer, is virtually impossible because less than 200 units were sold all over the country. The brazilian middle class simply had no money to afford a washer (or even a Chevrolet car). Most people did laundry by hand until late 70's and it's a cultural thing.
Men (they were really sexist) used to say that a washing machine would make their wives lazy or they would start cheating their husbands because they had no other chores to do. Women used to gossip about their friends who got a washing machine. At that time, brazilian women were proud of being the "perfect housewife" that did laundry and dishes by hand, raised 5 or 6 children and at night didn't look like an old mob to please their owners (oops, husbands). My mom faced lots of prejudice when she got her first washer. Again when she imported a dishwasher from the U.S. and finally when she divorced my dad. She was always ahead of her time. YAY.
