I've never owned a SQ, but they were always the choice of laundromats. Built like tanks.
My wife bought a basic Whirlpool (re-badged as Kenmore) top-loader 2 years before we got married, and we've used it ever since that's since 1988- coming up on 28 years now. We did buy a front-load washer/dryer pair about 7-8 years ago, so the old top-loader got re-purposed to shop rags and really dirty stuff. And its filled in a time or two when the front-loader was down for some electrical gremlin (grrr...).
That same basic Whirlpool toploader is still available as the most basic, generic model they make. All the parts are still available. That said, conventional-agitator toploaders are harder on clothing than front-loaders, and (at least my experience) don't actually clean quite as well. But they're darn sure reliable.
As for that front-loader (a low-end Whirlpool/Kenmore also), The root of every problem it had early on was low-voltage electrical connections (serial bus between motor controller and main controller, for example). I finally fired the service people, took it apart, and put electronic-grade grease on every board-edge connector on every module, and it hasn't given a lick of trouble since then. Viewed from a purely mechanicla point of view, front-loaders are far simpler. Just a tub on bearings and either a belt or direct-drive motor, no complex gearbox for an agitator like a top-loader. Its the electroncs that are their downfall- if they made a *mechanically* timed front-loader with no electronics, serial busses, and so on, man I'd be all over that.