I agree Neptune was probably the start. The NorgeTag machines were decent enough, a lower market entry machine. The AmanaTag machines were also an issue, never saw one worth fixing.

Agreed that buying inferior brands sent Maytag careening down the slippery slope into the pick-off pool.  Typical misguided, greed-based decision making by clueless heirs.

As for the Neptunes, they got off to a rocky start, but the 2004 stacking set that came with my current home has served me well.  The washer uses plenty of water compared to modern FLs and goes right into spin mode.  I hope this set continues to impress me well past its looming 20th birthday.

Meanwhile, the '87 A712 keeps plugging along doing occasional dirty jobs at 35 years old and counting. 

was a quality company, WRT refrigeration, and microwaves. Laundry, and cooking? Not so much.

I had always heard, that when Neptunes came out, Maytag dealers had to have in stock any part that might fail, so they could repair it quickly. Truth, or a tale?

There were many factors that contributed to them getting in such bad financial shape.

First and foremost was bad management you had a cash rich company with very conservative right wing management that was very anti-union.

They also wanted to take on whirlpool Frigidaire and General Electric not an easy thing to do by going full line. Maytag should’ve stuck with washers and dryers maybe dishwashers and disposers possibly a few other things but they didn’t need to be fooling with refrigerators and such and certainly not things like Hoover vacuum cleaners.

Buying  Admiral, magic chef, hard work, Norge was ridiculous all of these companies were going to go out of business they should’ve been left to go out of business. They probably should’ve gone after Amana that was the only quality company they ever bought and it had its own problems.

Neptune front loading washer did contribute to problems, like every new appliance that Maytag brought out since the late 40s there were a lot of problems with it initially but they were trying to cure them, Maytag never had the great engineers that WP, GE and WCI had. Biggest single problem but would hardly of cost them a dollar to fix they put a light in a machine that you could not turn off so guess what people closed the damn door.

Other problems were a lack of a window a wonky suspension system and a tilted tub that caused tangling none of those are the hallmark of a quality product.

When I was on the initial training for the Neptune front loader I pointed out the fact that you couldn’t turn off the light, they also put a crappy main water sealing  it and I told him that it would leak leak and not have a long life, they changed it about three or four years later to the type I would’ve used.  [ they used a face type lip seal but changed to a concentric lip seal a few years later like every other FL washer uses worldwide ]

Good thing about Maytag is their final top load washers we’re by far the best performing Toploader automatics that they ever made, their dryers also got pretty good toward the end.

Their disposer was way too expensive to make but they could’ve just gone to the premium end of the market and probably continued making them.

Their final tall tub dishwasher was riddled with problems They made over 40 improvements in in the first four years but they were getting a pretty good and they could’ve continued making that.

If you want a vintage Maytag grab one of those later top load washers with the load sensor agitator and orbital transmission. The dryers that went with them were pretty good also [ but never as good as what WP was selling for much less ]  Many people like the Neptune front loaders you want to rebuild one the parts are still out there.

John L

I always liked the Performa's. Simple design, easy to work on.

Hi Dan, The Atlantis is a Norge design, and while it holds more and performs much better than a real helical drive MT it was not considered a highly durable machine.

How many loads a week has your machine averaged ?

John L.