I recently purchased the August, 1960, Consumer Reports where they tested TOL washers against BOL washers of the same brand.
They found 3 different types of controls among the TOL brands: 1) those that were totally automatic, lacking even a timer to set (eg Maytag 160); 2) machines like GE and Frigidaire that had pre-set buttons for fabrics but also a rotary timer to operate; 3) machines like the Hamilton that permitted all parameters to be manually selected if preferred.
Not being familiar with Maytag in general other than seeing so many of those center-dial models, I'd never seen this 160 control panel with just a row of buttons/switches and no dial at all! For their test there were only 3 machines that were like this: the Maytag 160, the Sears '6495', and the Philco-Bendix W-208.
I'd appreciate learning a little more about this Maytag. It must not have been extremely successful because I think I'd have seen one in vintage ads, etc. Were there specific problems with it? CR wasn't crazy about this type of machine because there was so little user input permitted for wash times, etc. Did this machine break more often? It was listed at $409 in this test which was the most expensive washer by far.
Thanks for your reply.
They found 3 different types of controls among the TOL brands: 1) those that were totally automatic, lacking even a timer to set (eg Maytag 160); 2) machines like GE and Frigidaire that had pre-set buttons for fabrics but also a rotary timer to operate; 3) machines like the Hamilton that permitted all parameters to be manually selected if preferred.
Not being familiar with Maytag in general other than seeing so many of those center-dial models, I'd never seen this 160 control panel with just a row of buttons/switches and no dial at all! For their test there were only 3 machines that were like this: the Maytag 160, the Sears '6495', and the Philco-Bendix W-208.
I'd appreciate learning a little more about this Maytag. It must not have been extremely successful because I think I'd have seen one in vintage ads, etc. Were there specific problems with it? CR wasn't crazy about this type of machine because there was so little user input permitted for wash times, etc. Did this machine break more often? It was listed at $409 in this test which was the most expensive washer by far.
Thanks for your reply.
