The Caravel espresso machine is one of our favorite vintage home lever machines. Also associated with the Caravel name is Arrarex and VAM, both manufacturers or badged as manufacturers. This machine is so ingeniously engineered and simple to maintain and use that it is a wonder that it did not survive the transition from lever home machines to pump machines. But as it does not produce steam, it got left behind as market forces advanced. It is a pity, since if one wants to really enjoy an espresso, all the flavors and nuances of any bean blend or roast, the Caravel, at least for us, provides a baseline espresso to which all others are compared.
Part of the charm of the machine is the wide variety of different configurations of switches, colors, build quality, and features which seem to defy all logic. Here are 3 machines, all 220 volt, and all Caravels. They have the same basic design: removable boiler, heating element under the kettle like a small stove, on off switch, adjustable thermostat, small portafilter basket (43.5mm), and that great industrial styling in cast spelter and stainless steel. AS you can see from the following photographs, they are all different as well. All 3 have the Sailing Ship badge on the left side and a pilot light on the front of the base.
On the left in all the photos is the more usual Caravel in grey. In the middle is a model, originally orange, but with a red repaint, and on the right an orange model. Most of us differentiate between the different models by color...there is also a cream color which we have yet to use or inspect. In description, we will call them grey, red, and orange.
Grey has the best build quality of the 3. The kettle lid is heavy stainless steel and the paint is a glossy hammered type enamel. This machine has a piston with two u cups and a small o ring at the bottom which allows for water flow through the piston on the lever upstroke. The on/off switch is at the base on the rear of the machine and the thermostat control is at the top rear of the machine. The portafilter handle is a tapered hard rubber material which matches the lever handle. The cylinder is removed by turning the top which withdraws two pins from the cylinder housing and allows the piston to be lifted out of the machine through the top. The dispersion screen is permanently pegged into the cylinder. The base has 4 suction cups mounted on a perforated aluminum plate.
Red is a most interesting variant of the Caravel. The kettle lid is a bit lighter stainless steel material and it has a small lever with the sole function of raising and releasing the lid from the cylinder top. I find this most fascinating, as this is such a trivial issue to have devoted time and machining to create a system to reaise the lid about 5mm. That's all this lever does. The piston lock is identical to the grey. The dispersion screen is held in place with a spiral clip removeable from below. The piston has 2 u cups but it has no flow through o ring. The on off switch is a push pull knob on the side of the machine, the thermostat control is at the bottom of the rear and the knob at the top releases the kettle clip at the rear. The engineers went to great lengths to make the kettle removal not really any easier than the other models, but just a little more high tech. The plastic portafilter handle does not match the lever handle, and this may be a swap situation from years of use. The base of this model does not have suction cups, it has an array of rubber feet of various sizes. There is no evidence that it ever did have suction cups, and frankly, the suction cups on the other model don't suck...or maybe they do - they don't add much to stability.
The orange is the variant that many are aware of in that it has the naked piston design. The orange paint is a flat somewhat listless finish. The seals are inside the cylinder in the form of very thin o rings. The dispersion screen is held in from below with the spiral clip. The piston has the flow through o ring but a lon pin and clip mechanish at the top to lock the top of the piston to the top of the cylinder. This pin is removed manually by sliding it through the top of the cylinder and is a bit less convenient than the other models. The kettle lid is very light gauge stainless. The on/off switch is at the rear base and the thermostat control at the top rear. Originally both the lever handle and the portafilter handle were a black plastic with a groove in the center but the lever handle was broken in transit from Italy and I have temporarily relplaced it with a copper tube.
All 3 machines are the same size and all parts are interchangeable, more or less, and all 3 make the same great espresso. Quirky, yes, but that is what makes them so much fun!
