My agitator seems to take up less room than my very first washer which was Sears branded so I don't know which American brand it really was. I think you can fill a top load more than a front load. My second washer was a Danby front load which was a re-badged Gorenje from Slovenia. Since it was European, it held a lot less than the typical American washer but could crank up to 200 degrees!
I typically manually fill my washer with extra water after it turns off. Speed Queen lowered the water level settings from the original days to get a better energy use score or something like that. There is probably a mechanical fix available on YouTube, but I'm fine with what I do.
My late mom's washer had electronic controls, and some of the lights no longer worked. She died with a good dozen or more loads of dirty laundry, but since I was selling her house I didn't want to fix the washer. It was quite a guess to figure out what the water temperature and speed would be.
