Call me Mr. Rotisserie; I love these things!
My family has had a total of 3 General Electric Stoves with built-in rotisseries, each one of a different vintage and 1 of them was installed in a conventional wall oven, 1 in a self-cleaning oven, 1 was installed in the upper oven of an "up and down" unit where the panels were removable for cleaning in the lower P*7 oven. All of them worked so well and were such an integral part of our Family's cooking that for me, at this point, a rotisserie is not just desirable, it is indispensable. I have a couple of vintage Roto-Broils, but I would be much happier with one inside of my main oven. Unfortuntately, as the US appliance manufacturers have dumbed-down their lines, it is impossible to find unless one is willing to shell-out 4K or more on a Gaggenau or a Miele oven and put up with the equally expensive service. I am always looking for vintage GE wall ovens with this feature and with all the equipment intact. I have collected several rotisserie parts to have on hand when such an oven comes along.
I also have found a Vintage Caloric Ultramatic 40" stove with an oven and a side broiler compartment with a rotisserie and all the parts. Unfortunately I live in an area that doesn't have Natural Gas and I've been told by the local Propane supplier that they will NOT under any circumstances, convert my stove to work with propane without electric spark ignition. Poo on them. I think a fancy gas grill with one of those fancy radiant grids on the side to work the rotisserie would be great but I haven't been able to find anyone that owns one to tell me whether they work well or not.
Traditionally, rotisseries work with radiant heat from the SIDE of the meat that's spinning. One of the best rotiserries that I've even used was an antique model that wound up and ran on clock springs that you set up in front of a fireplace with a pan of water under the spit. The flavor was unbelievable because of the smoke from the wood fire. You can still find these and I believe somebody makes brand new versions of these.
As to your cleaning question, I never thought they made that much of a mess. On the GE rotisseries, you set the rotisserie armature on one of the model's broiler pans(they still made them with the holes in them for those parts way into the '90's) and put some water in the pan. You set the Oven Selector to "Rotisserie" and set the corresponding temperature dial to a range between 300 and 400 degrees. The broiler unit never got red when used this way. There wasn't a whole lot of spatter unless you were roasting something like a duck or a goose(which I did once and had my first scary kitchen fire; while I was panicking and flailing my arms, my Father walked by the oven, calmly, shut the oven door and put the fire out).
Rotisseries that are supposed to work directly over a heat source, such as the ones on cheaper grills and the Jenn-Air versions don't work very well. The grease that drips down from whatever is being cooked causes flare-ups and if you put a pan under the spit to catch the grease, you're defeating the system and always filling it with water as it boils away. Rotisseries always work best with remote radiant heat. Some old Caloric gas wall-ovens had a rotisserie accessory that was supposed to work inside the main oven, not the lower broiler oven. I'd be very curious to find out how that system worked.
