I bought an instruction guide for the AEG Olympia Carrera Si long before this typewriter came along.

I like to scan the guides anyway, plus you never know when that elusive model will magically appear. Another example in my case being an IBM Personal Wheelwriter that popped up locally on Gumtree.¹

Weighing in at 7kg compared to its predecessor the 6.5kg Carrera, the Carrera Si is probably the heaviest “modern-era” portable ever built (for convenience, let’s define “modern-era” as being 1987 onwards so we can discount heavier old-school portables like the Triumph-Adler Gabriele 8008 and the Olympia Portable S).

Surprisingly, the instruction guide reveals that the Si could be purchased with its own travelling bag, making it even bulkier!

You really wouldn’t want to swing one of these things around, despite advertising to the contrary!

In the latter part of the 1980s and into the 1990s, low-cost mass production led to cheaper and lighter e.t.s with a pared-down design and more plastic.

Underneath at least, the Carrera Si bucks the trend by retaining some solid bones. This includes the retention of a metal (rather than plastic) print carrier:

And an elaborate metal (rather than plastic) paper bail (with rollers and plastic feet that the Carrera doesn’t have):

The default typeface on the Carrera/Carrera Si seems to be Class Gothic 10/12.

Less solid and a design weakness are the ribs on the rear underside of the snap-on lid, which engage with vents on the back of the machine to prevent sideways movement.

Buy a Carrera or a Carrera Si and you’ll invariably find some, if not all, of these ribs broken off.

The safe way is to lift the lid from the front and then push the lid away from you before lifting off. It’s all to easy to lift the lid and move it sideways, which is when the breakages happen.

To recap on an earlier post, the Carrera has slider switches to the right of the keyboard, whereas the Carrera Si has a row of function keys and LEDs to the left of the keyboard:

The Carrera Si instructions confirm the print speed as “12 cps (for 10 pitch)”. Which must mean that 12 pitch is slightly slower. At any pitch, it’s certainly quicker than the 10 cps Carrera.

As noted elsewhere, the “i” tagged onto the end of the model name, on this and other Olympia “Office Line” models, denotes the inclusion of a computer interface, although the “Carrera” has the same interface.

Abdeckplatte für TTL Universal Schnittstelle (cover plate for TTL Universal interface):

Despite the provision of a Paper In/Paper Out key, I find the inset platen knob a bit of an annoyance. Design-wise it looks great, but manually adjusting the paper up and down with any precision is cumbersome.

The keyboard is sensitive to the touch and takes some getting used to. Too gentle and the key switches may not bottom-out. Too heavy-handed and a double key press is likely.

¹There’s probably not much chance an “Exclusiv” variant of the Carrera Si (German eBay sighting shown below) will “pop up locally on Gumtree”, but you never know.