POD 4/18/2017

[brucelucenta]

Hotpoint made some very nice looking machines. The fact that the entire outside body of the machine was porcelain certainly made sure it stayed looking good for years to come. The outside case served as the outer tub which the water spun out into also. I always found them to be decent at washing, rinsing and spinning. They also held a fairly good size load too, for a solid tub machine. I would love to have seen or use one of the very last models that had a separate tub, much like the GE mini basket, that could be used to do two separate loads at the same time. I remember that the dryers were porcelain exterior too, up until they started making them as clones of GE dryers. That happened even before they changed to the perforated tub model washers.

 

[gyrafoam]

I have always believed the goose-neck straight-vane agitator did a better job than the later spiral one.
They are good machines and I would agree with you. My mid-sixties model has the spiral agitator and performs well enough for me in spite of the lame roll-over. I also think they tend to rinse well.

 

[peteski50]

Hotpoint!

This was our first washer the 55 hotpoint! This would be a ineradicable find!
This washer did not pause between agitation and spin and it had the goose-neck straight-vane agitator.

 

[hilovane]

My mom's forst washing machine was a 1960 Hotpoint "Touch Command" TOL model (with matching dryer, of course).

It seemed to do a decent enough job. It would creep me out when it went off-balance; on one occasion it started "walking" and scared the S*** out of me, but good!
But, it was apparently troble-prone, and need more than infrequent service; it only lasted eight years before the tranny gave up the ghost. It was replaced with a Maytag, that lasted 20 years.

 

[gyrafoam]

I think the mid-fifties machines were made pretty well as most of the vintage Hotpoint survivors I know of are '55/'56 ish.
Too bad engineering kept tinkering with the design.
The people I knew with early '60's machines had nothing but trouble. By the mid-'60's things had improved somewhat.