I took my Adler Tippa S to a friend's place yesterday in order to get some help for a very badly stuck platen knob. We first had some trouble solving the issue, and to my surprise he suggested that I would be free to take his "similar but blue" typewriter with me and use that one instead. While thankfully we did end up solving the problem with the Tippa, I was intrigued to check out this blue mystery typewriter anyway, which had been sitting in the attic for decades. This is what he had:



A dirty but apparently little used ABC 2000 S; made in Portugal, which is proudly stamped on the machine in at least two different places. I had not heard of ABC typewriters before (apparently it was originally a German brand), but I could see from the rather unsophisticated way the brand logo was inserted on the carrying case and the heavy duty metallic ribbon cover, that this was probably a machine that was sold under different brands. While it's not exactly the prettiest typewriter I've seen, I agreed to give it a new home.

While there doesn't seem to be much information on these machines, it is apparently a rebranded Messa 2000 S from the early 1970s, and it was indeed sold under various names and colors. For some reason it was even sold as a Brother typewriter, under the names Brother XL1010, XL1012 or XL1014, depending on the carriage width.

The platen is rock hard from sitting decades in an attic which is very hot during summers and cold during winters, but to my surprise the ribbon works pretty well, and typing with the machine actually doesn't feel bad at all, besides a few sticky typebars.


Adjectives like "rudimentary" and "Spartan" might be accurate ways to describe this machine. There is no paper side guide and I've noticed some questionable design choices while trying to use its functions. While I do appreciate that it has a touch regulator and a tab function, the tabulator is factory pre-set only, although I can work with that if necessary. It looks like it would be an easy machine to maintain though, and it might prove to be a reliable no-frills workhorse.

While it is not the most exciting typewriter discovery, I'm quite pleased to add it to the collection. I will try to remove the plastic case and the bottom and give it a proper cleaning when I have the time for it.




Some links with more information on these machines:
https://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2012/02/portuguese-typewriter.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20101125051430/http://machinesoflovinggrace.com/ptf/EuropePortugal.html
https://www.oocities.org/wbd641/messa.html
https://type-writer.org/?p=3371
https://www.sixhat.net/tag/messa-2000s/