Total guess here, but 'Highlander' would make one think of the Scottish who were once stereotypically portrayed as being thrifty.  As the Highlanders were not the top of the line, I guess the name was meant to denote good value for the money.  Given how well Maytags of this era were built, they were right on the money, in my opinion!

You hit the nail squarely on the head - good value for the money.  No frills.

lawrence

For Hans, if it doesn't say Norge, then it isn't up to snuff. 

A good point was brought up about the mechanism arrangement of the Highlanders.  The cabinets are physically different than their higher end counterparts.  There is no removable front panel per say, instead the cabinet is reversed from the traditional Maytag front panel machines, with the back acting as the removable panel.  Thus, the Motor and Pump are accessible from the rear.  Having worked on a few of these, this arrangement is somewhat cumbersome, especially getting sud saver hoses aligned with the panel. 

The tops are also different than the TOL models, with the earlier Highlanders having actual chrome hinges for the lid.  Most Highlanders also have the wringer style agitator, with the 300 and 500 having the more traditional filter-column agitator.  There are timed filled models (123/124/A100) which are also fun to play around with.

The Highlander distinction was eliminated in January of 1966 when Maytag went to the completely redesigned cabinet and base-plate that was shared from the A106 up through the A906.

Ben

Malcom, you bring up a great point!  What's also very interesting about the 123 Highlander is that it was the FIRST Helical drive Maytag, as the 141 was not released until mid year 1957.  This means that they were producing both the AMP (center float agitator) 140 TOL washer along side the timed-fill Helical drive 123 Highlander.  They also nixed the lower end AMP drive 121P during this time.

GM did something very similar with the Pulsamatics being released in 1955 as the lower end washer option, cutting their teeth on it for 4 years before they revised the drive for the Pulsamatic and introduced the Multimatic in 1959 (although we can debate in a new thread if GM was really ready to make the transition during that time, LOL).

Ben

Were built and sold because they were cheaper to build, this helped Maytag sell Automatic Washers to more customers using their excessive mark-up price fixing polices that MT adopted many years earlier. And I can tell you first hand after struggling with the one piece back panel and difficult to remove top assembly of several hundred of these machines just to do simple repairs to the inlet valve, motor rollers, mineral build-up on the fill inlet, etc etc , I think is the major reason I quickly developed a dislike for the Highlander Maytags.

Tom's point about the very early suspensions is certainly spot on.  Maytag went through several revisions of the base/spring arrangement and placement up through the 06 series in 1966.  While the later 1961-1965 machines have a better suspension that the earlier helicals, all suspension issues were resolved with the 06 machines.  Depending on how the machine is loaded though places a pretty significant role in how well the machine will spin. 

My hunch is those early machines that suffered from porcelain lost had more to do with chronic overloading than an agitator design flaw.  The Power-Fin agitator was a vast improvement over the original agitator design, but it also masked overloading issues that otherwise would have continued to wear on the tubs on the later machines.

Ben