A Surprising (To Me) Addition

I shouldn't be at all surprised by this, but I am. I bought what I thought, according to the description, was an Epic 2500 upright from eBay. All well and good, until the machine arrived today, bearing the name "Epic 3000".

Epic 3000?

This is the first time I've ever even heard that such a model existed. I thought the next model after the 2500 in the Epic upright series was the 3500, but I've been proved wrong. As soon as I unboxed the machine and saw the logo, I really did do a double-take, and I had to look hard at the logo to make sure it was "real".

Close-up of the "real" logo:

After this, I googled "Epic 3000" and found out that it did indeed exist as a real model (Model 1717, by the way). Who knew? Its hard to pin down the year of production, but I'm going to guess that the Epic 3000 is the companion upright to the Epic 6000 (which had the same blue power nozzle with beige bumper) and blue/white Ambassador III.

The blue boy makes his debut. I still need to give this a cleaning treatment, but its in pretty good shape as is.

As can be seen in the pictures, this model has an original blue handle with slider switch, although the cord is a replacement. I gave this "blue boy" a brief test run today, and he sounds just fine. As mentioned elsewhere, I've totally fallen in love with the Electrolux/Aerus uprights, and love using them, so I'm happy to have another perfectly functioning model in my collection.

The blue power nozzle gives the Epic 3000 a little extra dash of color and style versus the other beige and blue machines (such as the Genesis, which has the beige power nozzle):

The top cord hook on this model seems to be a little higher up on the steering handle than the successor models. It was around this time that Electrolux uprights with the "ponytail" cord coming out of the top of the handle were recalled, and if memory serves, the Epic 2500 was one of those, so its a good guess that this Epic 3000 was the first model to have the cord coming out of the bottom of the handle, as all subsequent models did:

Assuming everything on this model is original (except the cord, as noted), and I have to admit it certainly looks so, then some of my upright suppositions need re-working. All well and good...as I pointed out elsewhere, I love the endless questioning and re-questioning of Electrolux and Aerus minutiae. Everyone needs a hobby, to be sure. One point...I saw an Epic 3000 for sale on eBay, and it had a beige cord and carrying handle, so perhaps this was the first model to include the carrying handle?

Re: the surprise of receiving a different model. eBay titles and descriptions tend to be, I won't say misleading, but certainly confusing to anyone who is familiar with the different models and their names. If, for example, I do a search for "Electrolux Guardian", I wouldn't be at all surprised to come up with something like this: "Aerus Lux Epic 9000 Guardian Electrolux 8000 Renaissance Vacuum Cleaner".