I have never owned a Hotpoint washer or dryer, and have only known a couple people who had ones made prior to them being made in the GE factory.

I've always heard their earlier washers didn't hold up as well as GE, Whirlpool, Kenmore or Maytag. Obviously the later ones lasted the same as GE, as only styling differed.

Hotpoint has been a division of GE for over a century. The company was originally known as the Pacific Electric Heating Co., of Ontario, California. Their first product was a clothes iron, but soon made toasters, coffee pots, and other small electric appliances. GE bought the company, along with Hughes - the originator of the electric range, and merged them into their heating device division, to become the Edison Electric Appliance Co. They did this to obtain certain patents for heating elements. The reason they stayed a division was because they had separate dealer networks. This enabled them to increase their market share in any given area. For example, in the town I live in, their was both a GE dealer (Snyder's), and a Hotpoint dealer (Weaver's) less than two blocks apart. In those days, dealers were franchised, so if one dealer was already selling Hotpoint, the other couldn't. But since GE was a separate line, another area dealer could sell them.