Shall we set the record straight again?
Wes,
For the record, Hobart did not sell the Kitchenaid Line to Whirlpool because they wanted out of the business.The owners of Hobart at that time was a conglomerate called Dart and Kraft. They were all of Kraft foods and Dart industries which had under their wing among others, Tupperware and all of the Kraft Foods brands.
There were additional companies in the group as well.
To make a long story short and I have posted this here before somewhere..
In 1980-81 Canadian Pacific tried to buy Hobart Corporation which was a privately held company whose primary owners were the Meeker Family in Ohio. This was considered a hostile takeover and the history of CP was one of buying up cash rich companies and draining the cash out of them and then dumping them so to speak.
In the politically charged atmosphere of the time, Dart and Kraft came to Hobart's "rescue" and bought it from the Meekers et.al. and thus saved an American company and kept it an American company.
D/K paid approx. $400 million for Hobart at the time.
Fast foward a bit and along comes Whirlpool which was being battered by the quality lines such as Maytag and wanting more market share desired a high end product name to add to their list of assetsand logically, their bottom line.
Since Kitchenaid was considered the best out there by most people, Whirlpool approached D/K and offered a cool $200 million bucks for it and D/K's bean counters, probably did you know what in their pants and accepted the offer.
D/K's position as to recoup all or most of their investment as quickly as possible by either selling off assets and or streamlining and upgrading companies to be more profitable. They had already put that into motion at Hobart and for the most part, I would have to say for the better.
They then spun off the food and manufacturing lines into Kraft foods and Premark International (standing for "Premier trademarks) which consisted of Hobart, Wolf, Tasselli, VulcanHart Tupperware, West Bend and Precor to name a few)
So they were looking at half their investment coming back to them in one sweet deal.
Basically, the rest is history for better or worse and for a time, Premark considered entering the commercial/professional market for dishwashers for the home but they were unable to hold on to the "SUPERBA" name as Whirlpool would not relinquish the rights to it.
At the time, they were still marketing commercial style residential ranges under the Wolf and Vulcan names so it wold have been a complimentary product line to have the dishwasher to go with them. Kind of like Kenmore Pro and Viking Pro machines.Of course WE all know these are nothing more than domestic machines.
With our European productioon facilities, we could have gotten right into the market with a full line of Dishwashers since the products Hobart manufactures over there were far more advanced than anything we had here by any manufacturer.
But as fate would have it, it did not come about and today Vulcan no longer markets a domestic commercial range and Wolf domestic is a separate brand from the Wolf commercial units totally.
Who made the better machine? Whirlpool or Kitchenaid? And now Maytag or Whirlpool? Any of us can venture to express our opinions here on this forum.
IMHO, I would say KA and Maytag beat the pants off anything anyone else had out there and probably would still do it today had original designs been improved upon. Imagine a Hobart based TALL TUB machine! Look at some of the machnes Maytag had before the buyup.. Some good products for sure.
So you could say in this case, money was the root of this particular evil, but I have to say this much, given the competition there is today in this throw away society, how long Hobart would have been able to compete and capture market share in an increasingly tough environment would be anyone's guess.
At the time, K/A sales represesnted like 75-80 % of the total unit volume for Hobart, but only 20-25 % of the $ sales vs. the commercial products they manufactured. How much would a consumer be willing to pay for a machine of that origianl quality as opposed to what is out there today?
Hey, how many guys have said that their old GE's and Hotpoint's worked great..some people would be satisfied with any kind of results from their dishwashers as long as they didn't have to do the dishes by hand.
I don't know what the jury will decide on how well the newer sidewinder pump systems do in the New Kenwhirlaids but they are getting good reviews so far. Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the curb warming K/A's. There are still loads out there to be reconditioned by us and you all know, most of them run well, consumers just want to upgrade to a newer look. They, once again, don't necessarily care what results they will get.
So to Wes who cannot seem to make up his mind..
Once and for all, listen to us all.. Keep that 21 as your daily driver. You won't be unhappy. The 15,16 and 17's were tanks but if you aren't careful with loading it, you will be disapponted. Since they did the dishes so fast, it was no big deal to wash all the dishware first and then another load of pots and pans. At least now you can spilt the loads in the 21 and not worry about cleaning results.
