I spoke with an engineer at Frigidaire because I wanted to buy my Mom a new 1-18 machine and there weren't any left. He told me GM decided to sell to WCI because the plant that produced appliances had to be complelely refitted. All the manufacturing machinery was 40 years old at the time and worn out. GM decided not to reinvest so the name was sold to WCI, the physical plant stayed with GM , was cleaned out and refitted to build the Chevy LUV trucks at the time. All that molding, stamping machinery was scrapped! WCI wasn't going to take on remaking it, so they rebadged their current Westinghouse line as Frigidaire. 

When he told me this I remarked how well the Jet Action agitator worked, he said take a look at the new Frigidaire with the indexing tub, "it has the same turbidity rate" as our old Jet Action machine" direct quote.

Jon said  "...the Frigidaire plant stayed with GM.... was cleaned out and refitted to build the Chevy LUV trucks...."  

Unless GM was building their appliances in Japan, that is not correct.   The Chevy LUV truck was a re-badged ("badge engineered")  Isuzu pickup (called the "Faster" in Japan) and was ALWAYS built in Japan and imported to the US (from 1972 to 1982).   It was never built here in the US.

Kevin

for the correction, the guy who told me that was obviously wrong in 1979. So I don't know what they built in that plant after 1980. Are you sure Peter, I tried to buy a Frigidaire washer in 1979 towards the end and no one had any of the 1-18's left! Maybe it was a regional thing, NE got stiffed again. Like with Speed Queen.

" IF research and development had not been stifled by the auto industry and the petroleum industry through the whores they bought in congress, we would not be dependent on petroleum like we are today, pollution would be less and our national economy would be better because not only would we not be paying so much at the pump, we would not need to have our military ensuring stability in petroleum producing countries which costs untold billions."

Thanks for posting this Greg!

Kevin

The up and down action of the Frigidaire washer might have given a better wash, but it was also more trouble prone. This is from someone who worked on probably a  hundred of these machines under warranty in the 70's. The bellows seal was a weak spot, saw many punctured by a nail, or a paper clip left in a pocket. Or they simply failed, and leaked water on the bearings. We never had less than 2 or 3 in the shop at any one time. That's a lot of warranty claims GM was paying out.

They were inexpensive to buy, compared to a similar Maytag, or Whirlpool built machine. So there should be a lot of them out there. But how many do you see, compared to the other machines? Not near as many, which means they met their demise early, while the others churned on.

Peter maybe when WCI agreed to buy they thought that they would continue the GM appliance designs [ I don't believe they did want to continue them ] but they soon came to thier senses and canned them. For many of the good reasons listed here , high wage costs, old out moded factories, very expensive machines to build that required a lot of engineering expertise to make work. I would wager that GE or WP would have had trouble making the 1-18 washer work and MT would never been able to make such a highly engineered design work.

All the companies that WCI bought were in trouble, yes they all made some very good products at one time, but none would likely have survived on thier own much longer. 

Westinghouse was a very big brand for builders in the Washington DC area in the 1950s-in to the 1960s, but thier appliances delovoped such a crappy reputation by the end of the 1960s and into the early 1970s that builders often found it harder to sell new houses when people saw the WH labels on the new kitchen appliances. Levett built over 30,000 new houses here in Prince George's Co. Maryland from 1959-1974-5. They used all WH appliances till about 1963-4 when they switched to GE as GE had much better Electric cooking appliances and laundry at that time to say nothing of the great GE refrigerators that were built in the 1960s.

I remember when WCI said that they would bury WP and other US appliance companies in the early 1980s, and we just laughed. Now even though I still feel that thier new\ appliances are still a cut below  WPs and GEs they have become number 2 or 3 in the US appliance market and are making money. I hate to admit it but thier strategy seems to have worked. 

article, it does confirm what I remember. But the factory must have been gearing up for the S-10's not the Luv's since they were always imports.

Hi Rex I am going to disagree about there being a choice of WH or GE apps being available in Levett homes. I worked on major appliances in that community for more than 15 years 1975-1990 and never saw a single house that had WH apps built after 1963, so if there was a choice every single buyer made the better choice to get GE LOL. Remember Levett offered almost no choices or changes other than colors in the fast building of these houses.

The earlier WCI "frigdaire"washers were westinghouse machines of a design that came
out around 1966(earlier T/L westys were rebadged Easys IIRC) these had porcelain
inner and outer tubs and the tub indexed.

 

Thanks, cfz!  It gets complicated at times.

NorfolkSouthern, you say that your machine is still a champ, and hasn't needed any repairs. Well, yeah, because you say it's used carefully for the lighter loads.

 I would say that if it were used like a typical family in the 70's used their washer, the outcome might be a bit different.

BTW, is that the green one you got from me several years ago?

And 3 cars with 6 transmissions, I hope they weren't GM! Since the brand used the GM relationship so heavily, I don't think it's a great advertisement to anything. Cute ad, but I'm not sure where it's going? Also the tag line: "Frigidaire- Here Today, Here Tomorrow" and possibly only tomorrow as was published in June of 1980.

-Tim