What appliance co did you consider best years ago..

[norgeway]

In my hometown of Lenoir nc , it was Frigidaire and Maytag, Shaw furniture co sold Frigidaire as did O.P. Lutz, Maytag washers were sold by Shields Refrigeration and Appliance..along with Kelvinator and Bendix...GE was considered a cheaper brand as was Philco Norge and Hotpoint, along with Kelvinator and Leonard Houses in the "Rich" section of town usually had Frigidaire or sometimes Westinghouse.And lots of times a Maytag washer..My aunt and uncle had all Frigidaire in the kitchen amd a Maytag set in the laundry ..I always thought a Frigidaire washer was leagues ahead of a Maytag, but most people didnt!

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Whirlpool!!!! Long Ago, <span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".12.$mid=11404741372480=243b53461b7def10293.2:0.0.0.0.0">--</span>And still do,<span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".j.$mid=11403231050768=2144ce861cef93fb000.2:0.0.0.0.0"> TODAY</span>!!!!

 

 

<span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".12.$mid=11404741372480=243b53461b7def10293.2:0.0.0.0.0">-- Dave
</span>

 

[washman]

Back in the day

Maytag was considered the creme de la creme of TL washing machines.

 

[norgeway]

Re Whirlpool..

Steel Rulane Gas Service was the ONLY dealer at home that sold Whirlpool, and they were a very small propane dealer, so there were no electric Whirlpool ranges...or in those days RCA Whirlpool!

 

[xraytech]

To me it was GE/Hotpoint.
It was the most common in our town, as it was what my grandparents sold at their store, J-G Appliance
The Economy Store sold Admiral, Norge, and Magic Chef ranges. The only things from the Economy store I've seen were a few Admiral side by sides.

When it comes to washers if it wasn't a GE automatic or a Speed Queen from J-G appliance it was a Maytag from the Maytag dealer one town over or a Kenmore set bought on time.

 

[norgeway]

Duke Power Co

Sold Hotpoint, you could have the price added to your electric bill, a few dollars a month, but very few TOL ranges ever were seen..at least by me, my Aunt Mabel did have a 63 double oven with the big square buttons and the huge oven window.

 

[DADoES]

 
There was a Whirlpool dealer in town from the 1950s through mid 1980s.  That was the main appliance source (also sold RCA, then Zenith TVs).  A Western Auto that handled Catalina.  Had to go to the next towns either direction for Maytag, GE, Westinghouse, Frigidaire.  Also had to go out of town for Kenmore.  When The Whirlpool Dealer shut down, Western Auto had taken on Whirlpool.  It also became a Mr. Appliance franchise, now is also shut down so there's NO appliance dealer in my home town.  The independent Butane Sales & Service carried Blackstone for a very brief time in the 1970s, then Whirlpool for a short while.  There was an electrician who had Philco for a while in the 1960s and into the 1970s, and Gibson and Easy at some points, and was the source of the Martha Washington wall oven, cooktop and hood in our 1964 house.

 

[frigilux]

Overall, I would say Frigidaire was a very strong brand in the 1960s and 70s...except for their dishwashers. That was their weak spot, at least in my opinion. I would have gladly lived with a Frigidaire washer, dryer, refrigerator and range, but I'd want a KitchenAid dishwasher.

Everything in our house was from Sears when I was growing up.

 

[polkanut]

<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">In our immediate & extended family Monarch, GE, Hotpoint, Speed Queen, and Maytag were/are the main go-to brands. </span>

 

[mikael3]

My generation set their eyes on the all-style, no-substance brands, like Viking, Wolf, Sub-Zero, all that stuff.  (Actually, I guess their stuff is good , but I'm not as impressed today as I was in the '90s.) For years, I thought that one day I'd have one of those glamorous brands, but mostly I took what came with the various apartments, then what came with the condo, then what came with the house. 

 

Only recently have I gotten serious about outfitting a remodeled kitchen, and I can't believe I'm going back to my great-aunt's choice of a mid-century Frigidaire.  I really had no idea that her old range was anything special, but it doesn't surprise me that she looked around for the best possible brand, and then bought their almost-but-not-quite-TOL.  She passed that trait on to me!! 

 

On this site, it seems like the overall votes on the ranges put Frigidaire and GE ahead of all the rest.  I wish I could try out a vintage GE to see what all the fuss is about!  

 

I'm less clear on the refrigerators.  It seems like a lot of people criticize the Frigidaire fridges--kind of ironic, given the brand name!!  I can't quite figure out which brand gets the most votes here. 

 

[mikael3]

Hans, I'm surprised you'd say that "GE was considered a cheaper brand".  I'm not sure I had an opinion on much of anything before I joined this site, but even so, I would have thought that GE was one of the higher-end manufacturers. 

 

[norgeway]

Let me correct what I said..

In my Childs Eye view I thought that, the reason being, Crowells sold GE, Crowells was the place on North Main street that sold probably more stuff than any other...but the majority of their sales were credit sales and BOL stuff..you could call George Crowell in the morning and say, George , My fridge quit and I really dont know when I can pay you but I need one...and George would say, leave the key under the mat , when you got home a new one would be there and you never signed a bill or anything, you just went by and gave him 15 or 20 dollars a month, it was a tiny store with a dirt floored rear section, a real disaster, but no finer people on earth, so everyone I ever saw who had GEs were mainly lower income, I thereby looked at GE as cheap....Frigidaire on the other hand was sold by Shaws , Shaws was in a big 3 story brick store with polished wood floors, and a spacious elegant showroom,Lawrence Hayes, the owner always and I mean aLWAYS had a nice suit on, and was on the local banks board of directors.." And roda a bIG Harley Electra Glide to work up into his late 70s!"..So naturally all the more affluent people in town shopped there and bought the most deluxe Frigidaire stuff in the latest colors and the TOL Zenith tvs and stereos...Westinghouse was sold by Bernhardt and Seagle hardware and Leftwitch electric..along with Westinghouse Bernhardt Seagle sold Amana and KitchenAid..Nuff said about who they catered too..It was also the second oldest hardware co in the nation until it closed a few years ago.

 

[mikael3]

It's funny, I always thought Kenmore was a cheap brand, mostly because you could buy it on time.  That just seemed like a mark of lower quality to me.  That, and the fact that the Sears store of my childhood always looked so dreary and run-down, despite being in a fairly new space.  I remember their old, pre-mall location as well, and it was just awful--and that was my impression as a little child!  The one interesting thing they had was a giant papier-mâché tableau of a scene from Winnie the Pooh.  The whole mostrosity was way past its prime, with chunks of the plaster broken away, and the paint all scuffed and scraped.  It was one of those things that rode the fine line between quaint and creepy.  I was mesmerized by it as a child, and it still haunts my dreams.  I was also very concerned as a child about the "Roebuck" part of the name.  Some people called the place "Sears", and others called it "Sears & Roebuck"--but it was the same place!!  That just creeped me out.  Clearly, I was headed for a lifetime of problems.

 

[nurdlinger]

My parents when they were first married and both working (late '40s) bought quality stuff. GE AWS6 washer. Frigidaire refrigerator. (don't know the model but it had the 2 cu. ft. freezer hanging from the top, and the tilt-out bin at the bottom) Sunbeam mixer. Toastmaster toaster. Tappan gas range. All that stuff lasted into the '60s. A couple more GE washers followed, and then a Frigidaire with the blue jet-cone agitator. I wasn't living at home anymore, I heard from my mother that she did not like it at all. Other things were more difficult to pattern. The Tappan range was replaced by a "Sunray" I think. It had a small second oven above the cooking surface. That one lasted from the mid-60s until they retired and moved away in 1985. There were a couple of GE MobileMaid portable dishwashers as well because our old house lacked the counter/cabinet space to mount a conventional one. So I guess my dad believed in GE the most.

In my own life I bought a house for the first time in 1978, and I got a GE washer (masquerading as a JC Penney) It worked for me for 26 years until I gave it away to the son of some friends of mine. Also had a Whirlpool dryer similarly aged. The house came with GE range and dishwasher. Since replaced with another GE range but a KitchenAid dishwasher that I believe is a Whirlpool underneath. I wanted a front-loading washing machine to replace the GE/Penney (around 2005) but I soon learned that the GE-branded versions of same were really Frigidaire (from Electrolux) underneath. So I looked around and wound up with a Kenmore-branded version of the same thing. That time is when I discovered AW.com and I have remained here ever since. Heaven knows what I would buy if I needed to replace the Kenmores.

 

[goatfarmer]

The big place for appliances in town was Radio Furniture Mart. They sold Frigidaire mostly, some Maytag. JE Walz sold GE, I don't remember who sold Whirlpool.

 I always thought Maytag was the best in laundry, Frigidaire in other appliances.

 

[danemodsandy]

Sears Kenmore:

Was the top choice in my world growing up. All the area's housewives were highly conscious of the feature differences between models, creating something of a "horsepower race," similar to their husbands' obsession with engine sizes for cars. The lady who could proudly show off a new 800 pair trumped housewives with a set of 400s, and of course, everyone's goal was to have matched Lady Kenmores. A surprising number of those ladies managed to wheedle LKs out of their husbands, too.

Sears was - and wasn't - po' folks territory. While Sears did carry a lot of modestly-priced merchandise, a Sears card was not the easiest card to get. The reason was that Sears sold a lot of "non-repossessibles" - how do you get the paint back off a deadbeat's house? There was a substantial perception of clout among the Joe Lunchbucket set when it came to having a Sears card.

One of the very attractive things about that era was that major manufacturers gave the lower-middle and middle-middle classes affordable luxury. People had Kenmore appliances instead of KitchenAid and Maytag, but they had damn nice stuff. They drove Country Squires instead of Buick Estate wagons, but again, they weren't giving anything up, not really.

*EDIT* Sears was never the highest-quality brand, but it was far and away the most feature-rich brand; Sears management of the day knew their customer well. Look at a late-60s LK washer vs. a Maytag 906 someday - it's no contest. Same with dishwashers - LKs had more cycles, more buttons, more glamor, more everything. Even vacuums - an LK vacuum had a Powermate that made the power nozzles on Electroluxes look primitive. Lux was still out there with a basic PN, and Sears was adding headlights, edge cleaning and adjustable height to the concept. We all know these examples of Populuxe didn't usually last as long as premium brands, but Sears' target customer didn't even really care - by the time something gave up the ghost, they were ready for something newer and even more feature-laden.

Different time.

 

[norgeway]

We had a mismatch of stuff..

When my grandparents got electricity in 38, the only appliances they bought was an Apex refrigerator, purchased thru the REA.."Rural Electrification Association"a iron, and a radio to replace the battery model, in 1950 the Apex developed a leak and ran them all out of the house, as both my Grandmothers nephew and my Uncle were working at Leftwitches, she bought a biggg old Westinghouse fridge that to my knowledge is still running in my uncles vacation home in West Yellowstone Montana," Which he sold a few years ago..which did NOT make me happy, I wanted it back as it is the fridge I remember as a small kid,Mother and Dad bought a Thrifty Thirty range and BOL Fridgidaire fridge in Dec 50 when they married...long story made short, but Grandmother and Grandaddy went to the old original Lowes store in down town North Wilkesboro and bought a 54 Super 30 Hotpoint range when they re modeled the house, doing away with the 1934 TOL Majestic wood range, in 56 Mother and Dad ,who lived uptown in an apartment, moved in with my Grandparents to save money while building their new home,,,Grandad died at age 57 in Nov of 57 and the house never got built, so I grew up in the same house my Mother was born in..in 1929, unfortunately, Mother sold her stove and fridge and used Grandmothers as the fridge was more deluxe and bigger, and the Hotpoint stove was newer, The Westinghouse fridge was great, but the Hotpoint suffered from numerous problems, being traded in in 69 on a Kelvinator that WAS a piece of garbage!!lol..For washers we had ,a 55 Pulsamatic Frigidaire, a 69 WCDAN Frigidaire, and a 86 Maytag...Which turned us against all maytags!!LOL What a dud, then a GE, a front loading stacked Frigidaire, and after my parents died in 2000, I have had any number of washers since, settling on a 83 Kenmore which is wonderful.

 

[wayupnorth]

Many of our smaller mom and pop stores had ge, maytag, frigidaire, etc, but my parents went to Sears for everything to do with all appliances. Needless to say I dont now. One of the remaining mom and pop stores is still the only authorized Speed Queen dealer. Too many people believe reviews that a tea cup of cold water can clean clothes and go to Lowes or HD and say what a great deal they got on an electronic piece of crap. After 5 years, its dead. Thanks, but I'll keep my 30 year old Maytags.

 

[appnut]

My world was similar to Sandy's.  Lots of people had Kenmore laundry.  The houses around me came with most GE built-ins, Westinghouse was next.  The discerning people bought Frigidaire in the 1950s.  Some were loyal but most switched to Maytag, Whirlpool, or Kenmore.  Few had GE laundry.  Fridges were most likely to be Kenmore or Frigidaire.  Replacement dishwashers were Kenmore or KitchenAid.  I saw then the futility and uselessness of 1-level wash wonders because so many housewives were washing all the prep, pots, pans, and such because of that design flaw as well as their practicality wouldn't let them run a dishwasher with all the bottom rack filled and not much in the top  or partial racks filled.   Once Maytag came out with their line, almost everyone went with Maytag, KA became 2nd.