Wandering on
I WAS VERY EXCITED
to see a Wanderer motorcycle in the Vilnius Auto Museum collection featured in
Octane
258. My great-grandfather Johann Baptist Winklhofer co-founded Wanderer in 1885 with his business partner Adolf Jaenicke (whose sister Johanna he also married), and I have a very similar 1939 Wanderer with a 97cc 2.3hp two-stroke Sachs engine [pictured above].
Wanderer was one of the four founding car companies of Auto Union during the Great Depression, together with Horch, Audi and DKW. It was headquartered in Chemnitz, Saxony, and stopped operating at the end of World War Two. Audi is the only survivor of the former Auto Union, and still has as its logo the famous four rings that originally represented the four car brands.
Letter of the month
Starting with the assembly of British-licensed Rover bicycles – Wanderer means ‘Rover’ in German – the company moved into making motorcycles from 1902, and automobiles from 1912. Its most famous vehicle is probably the Wanderer Puppchen, or ‘Little Doll’, a small open tourer that was built until 1926 in various forms.
In 1922, Wanderer sent two special-bodied cars to Sicily for the famous Targa Florio road race.