AutoCult Wanderer W3 Puppchen (1914) (Germany) "Café Francais"

About the Original:

Successful premiere

The company “Wanderer” started with the assembling of automobiles in the summer of 1911. For its first passenger car the technical department did comprehensive research about the state of the art and about the needs of its potential customers. Probably also some competitors’ products were thoroughly studied.

This meticulousness paired with the focus on a good quality and a high reliability led to a strong market acceptance of the premiere model from the beginning. Designated as the W1 (5/11 hp) the first Wanderer automobile embodied a modern passenger car that met the requirement of transporting two persons and their luggage at an acceptable price. Produced in the years 1913 and 1914, the Successor W2 (5/15 hp) was fitted with a more powerful engine. In the year of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 the engine was upgraded again. The engine displacement was increased to 1,296 cc and at an equal performance of 15 hp it was also possible to improve the torque. The bigger displacement was achieved through the increase of the stroke from 95 mm to 100 mm. The dimension of bore per cylinder with a diameter of 64 mm remained identical to the one of the predecessor. The improved passenger car went down in the history of Wanderer as the W3 (5/15 hp). The main features of the W3 did not differ from those of its predecessors. There was still only one access door on the left side, whereas on the closed, right side of the car up to two spare wheels were fixed. At the end of the war in 1918, the car got another further development and was launched as the type W4.

Inseparably linked to the first automobile of Wanderer is the name “Puppchen” (little doll). This association derived from the operetta “Die keusche Susanne” (Chaste Susanne) by Jean Gilbert.