Glad to see someone mention Speed Queen, motto: “Built Better to Last Longer”. I hope they start building fridges before my late 1990s-vintage Frigidaire goes.

We do a lot of kitchens in our contracting business. The sheer irrationality of some of the decisions I’ve seen would boggle your mind. One client insisted, positively insisted that she must, absolutely must have her freezer on the right of the refrigerator. Do you know how many companies build those? No? Well, let me tell you, at the time this happened, there was one, precisely one, that offered that option. The company was Gaggenau, and the flippin’ thing cost $15,000.00. They bought it, and as far as I know, it’s the only Gaggenau refrigerator in the county. The appliance guys we know who were asked about servicing it just laughed, and laughed… With a distinct note of hysteria.

Household appliance purchases are almost never made on any sort of rational basis, or we’d all be using Speed Queen washers and dryers, and the rest would be some mix of other professional-grade brands.

The compressor/motor/control hardware? Expendable and modularly replaceable. Quick disconnects, slide-in/slide-out assemblies, plug-in control modules. Even with vacuum pump-down of the refrigerant piping to refill with refrigerant, maybe 30-45 min to swap out; either recycle/scrap the old one or (competent) 3rd party rebuild. Same would work with most major appliances (maybe a universal motor unit to drive compressors, washing machine gearboxes, dryer drums, etc.?).

Assuming, of course, one wants to keep the same color shell…..

Old fridge was 1/24 of an average yearly wage. New fridge is 1/92. Exact ratio: 3.76. Ratio of 1735:529 = 3.28

You remember the appliances that lasted “forever”, but without knowing how many of them actually lasted that long…? You might have just had that one Frigidaire that got built just right…

The dumps and recycling yards are filled with old appliances that broke, and were not at all economical to repair. The few that are still running, for whatever reason? How many of them are there, really?

Some things need analysis before you can start legitimately longing for the machinery of yore. Most of which wasn’t really that great, to be quite honest.

The ’70′s fridge died a couple years ago and was replaced by the power company for “free”. With a quite equivalent model. The high-end fridge of the ’70′s had become the bottom-end product of the 2010′s. Will it last until 2055 with a couple of repairs? Probably not. It’s the wrong color.