I want to add/correct some information here that might clear up some of the questions asked.
Louis, yes, older frontloaders were not as frugal as the current ones. Still, of the 150 liters of water, how much was hot/heated? If I recall the machines my European neighbors brought with them, only prewash (optional) and main wash were heated, the rinses were cold. Meanwhile, American top loaders used to use 60-80 liters for the main wash, then another deep rinse in warm and we're not even talking about the overflow/spray rinses. It wasn't until the 70's energy crisis that they set the default for a cold rinse. While the energy requirements fell, it's still hard to get a top loader to use less than 150 liters, and the newish HE top loaders still lag behind the frontloaders.
Thomas, Brazil had waves of different kinds of machines. Up to early 60's, most were imported (the only brand from that era that I've seen my neighbors owning that were *made* in Brazil, were the Mueller machines made with wooden tanks) -- we had Hoovers with impellers and twintubs, Brastemp started importing Whirlpool machines and selling them under Sears and Brastemp labels, parts for the Bendix rubber tub and tumblers were imported from US and assembled in Brazil, Westinghouse imported some parts and made/assembled Laundromat frontloaders until the early 70's.
By the 70's, a wave of "Brazil is the best country in the world, foreign people suck!" struck the country, unfortunately, so Bendix changed their brand name to "Karina", a lot of other foreign brands disappeared as the economy progressively tanked and then we had hyperinflation in the 80's. By mid 70's, Whirlpool (thru the Brastemp label) was one of the only manufacturer of washers and dryers in Brazil, even Bendix rubber tub washers, which by that time were the most popular machines, disappeared from the market altogether -- that's when Industrias Pereira Lopes, which manufactured fridges and compressors for Tecumseh, started making the Westinghouse top loader under license, by early 80's or so they got tired of people not being able to pronounce Westinghouse and changed their brand name to Lavinia. That was the heat under Brastemp's butt to make them bring their "new" models (which had been made in US since the 60's or so) to Brazil. Late 70's saw the demise of frontloaders in Brazil.
Early 80's also brought a manufacturer named Enxuta, which made a 2.5 kg front loading washer so basic that it had no suspension -- during spin, if the machine started shaking, a pendulum stuck to a suction cup (as a "delay device") would make the machine tumble for 5-20 seconds and try spinning again. They were cheap (as opposed to only inexpensive), and sold well enough for the manufacturer to introduce a 4 kg machine a year or so later, and then a washer with detergent and softener dispenser. Only after that, is that top loading washers in Brazil started offering a softener dispenser.
During the late 80's, Whirlpool started importing a washer made by their subsidiary in Argentina into Brazil -- a proper front loading washer that could heat the wash water and had dispensers for prewash, wash, bleach and softener. It cost less than any of the "traditional" top loaders in Brazil. It started selling like hot cakes when people found out how well they cleaned and how much cheaper to run they were. This model was essentially an English model of a Philips front loader made in Argentina and sold in Brazil under the Frigidaire label, which there was owned by Brastemp at the time.
Rumors we heard at the time was that all hell broke loose at the CEO levels at factories like Brastemp, Industrias Pereira Lopes (Westinghouse) etc. Finally the truth came out: frontloaders which use just belts and vary the speed of the motor are *way* *way* *way* cheaper to make than top loaders with any significant kind of transmission. That could not stand, people need to make a profit, so the the Frigidaires sold for about 3 years and disappeared, only to come back under some other label but much more expensive than the toploaders. Just like dryers, which are cheap to make but cost as much as a top loader, all the frontloaders in Brazil (which at the early 90's or so included Bosch, under a Brazilian label I space out at the moment, Consul or Prosdoscimo, perhaps?) were introduced as "luxury" items because they heated the water and had dispensers. Even some top loaders started being sold with built-in heaters. Competition at the time was the only force that made Whirlpool/Brastemp introduce their "Mondial" ("World Washer") model in Brazil.
By this time, frontloaders had disappeared from US too, it was very hard to find any by 1992 when I moved here. When they were re-introduced as High Efficiency washers, they were put on the market at a premium, and we were told "they cost more to make". They don't. Arranging for a new factory building or a new line is expensive, but there is less material and labor in each machine than any top loader you care to point to, *except* perhaps the mechanism that Whirlpool used with motion loss as a transmission for one of their top loaders, they may still be using that as a HE top loader, I haven't kept current.
On yet another hand, *both* here and in Brazil, there has always been a very strong campaign warning any housewife that cared to listen that frontolading washers will cause a flood at the drop of a hat. Never mind that accidents when the machines are actually used properly, as opposed to someone forcing the door open when the machine is full, are about the same rate that top loaders flood your laundry room -- in fact, many top loaders used the same material for their water bellows as the front loaders' boots, the only difference is that GE, SpeedQueen, Hotpoint etc machines hid the rubber boot out of sight under the tub. This campaign, as we know from insiders, was led by companies like Procter & Gamble and Lever Brothers/Unilever, when they noticed that front loading washers needed much less detergent than the top loaders at the time.
This, coupled with the fact that Tide became an instant hit and was high sudsing (thus not so useful in frontloaders) *and* Tide began an aggressive ad campaign of putting their box of detergent in all top loading washers for sale and claiming that the "majority of manufacturers approve of Tide" and heavily suggesting the manufacturer paid for the box, when in fact they gave the boxes away (and said so in small print), as you can often see in the picture of the day here, was what made Americans and Brazilians "prefer" top loaders.
A very similar thing (competition forcing improvements) happened in Brazil when it comes to detergents -- by the early 80's several brands completely disappeared: ODD (Orniex Detergentes), BioZima, all of the Henkel brands (Viva, Mago, Gigante Branco [Weißer Riese?] etc) until we had only Unilever brands (OMO, Skip, BioPresto, Minerva etc). By the mid-80's Skip and BioPresto disappeared, only to come back as OMO Maquina when the frontloaders were re-introduced in Brazil. For a time OMO Maquina was extraordinarily expensive and hard to find, and I heard that it disappeared for a while until Procter & Gamble entered Brazil and started selling Ariel. It's not something we talk about a lot when I visit family there, so I'm not current with the state of affairs.
Suffice it to say, that the market forces are not as clear as we want to believe, it's not just the clients, or the government or the appliance manufactures or detergent/additive manufactures, but a combination of clients that want a washer that cleans really well without a need for long soaks or annoying pre-treatments and they'd rather not have to pay a lot in utilities, manufacturers and governments that want incentives for technologies they already have and don't want to develop new stuff etc.
For example, several of the large appliance manufacturers in US, had in their technician training materials that top loaders were better because they don't flood the laundry area, this continued until they introduced front loading washers into the market. Tide was "high efficiency" and still foamed a lot until Henkel entered the market here with Persil, then 3 months later, as if a miracle occurred, they "learned" how to make Tide TurboClean (probably from the same/similar formulas for Ariel in Europe, which they make) and finally, after more than 60 years claiming that suds were good, they start harping about how suds make you need to rinse again.
The reason I keep hitting the same piano key here with our club is that I keep hearing the same "propaganda" (which is basically a mix of falsehoods and half-truths spread out by manufacturers and anti-government folks) over and over and over again. We need to stop this cold -- *no one* will look out for us end users but ourselves, the establishment and its servants only want profit because they see the *investors* (stock market etc) as clients, we are the products to be sold.
Please stop for a bit, think about what is going on.
Cheers all,
-- Paulo.
