See the link for a thread a while back on the Contemporary forum about a "Globaltek" Renaissance cylinder, which I'm fairly sure was 220v, and there was a Guardian upright from the same company. Not sure if they sell worldwide. These machines looked identical to the North American versions, save for the name, of course, and some different attachments.

To the best of my knowledge, there were two Electrolux/Aerus uprights with an attached hose; the Lux 4000 and Lux 6000. Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong on that. They also came with a separate electric hose and Sidekick mini power nozzle.

Hopefully some other users will chime in, but from what I understand the new Guardian upright has a noticeable improvement over the older models in suction and airflow. Why they did away with the attached hose, I don't know. Perhaps cost-cutting? Since they already offered the separate electric hose, there's no real need for two. Just a personal opinion, but I don't like uprights with attached hoses and tools, so the older Lux design suits me well.

As you can see from my Epic thread, I just picked up an Epic 3500 for $20, and I'm very impressed with it. I see various older (well, between 15-25 years old) Lux uprights for sale now and again, at least locally.

As for the design, Aerus seems to have gone backwards in most ways, style-wise, to about 30-odd years ago . The middle-of-the-line Lux Legacy canister model looks much more top-of-the-line than the Guardian.

I did see that thread. Those are interesting looking machines.

I'm not sure what the relationship is now between Electrolux of Sweden and Aerus, but Aerus is still trying to hang on to the Electrolux, or Lux name as tightly as possible. Its such an iconic name; "Aerus" really doesn't convey anything, at least not yet, even though the machines are in a lot of ways the same as in the old days.