Wanderer-Werke: cars, vans and... margarine?

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This beautiful delivery van is a Wanderer 6/30 - the spare wheel cover leaves us in no doubt as to the model. The Wanderer company, once a part of the mighty Auto Union conglomerate, offered it as a saloon car ('Limousine') and a cabriolet for sun-seeking drivers, as well as a commercial version to please the companies, too. It had a 1551cc (and later 1563cc) four-cylinder engine, good for 30 hp.

This picture caused us to do some guessing about where and when it could have been taken. Zooming in on the barrel and boxes only just gave away the word ‘margarine’ - yes, the oil-based butter substitute. Oddly, it seemed that the Wanderer’s ‘W’ was visible on them, too. Could the Chemnitz motor manufacturer really also have been involved in the production of sandwich spreads?

The internet did not reveal anything about such a relationship but it did bring us to a considerably larger version of the same picture with more of background visible and in a higher resolution, too. It came from Audi’s PR department and is the one shown here. That revealed that it was taken at the Chemnitzer Margarine-Werke of Herr Franz Niescher, which turns out to have been only a 15-minute drive away from Wanderer’s impressive factory on the Zwickauer Strasse - very convenient for publicity shots. The old Wanderer factory, by the way, was still there some 15 years ago when we visited the place. Is it still standing today?

Hang on, though, what about that ‘W’ on the margarine boxes? Another search revealed to us that some eccentric took the trouble of preserving his margarine wrapper for posterity and storing it for some eighty years, only to place an image of it on the internet. It shows that Franz Niescher must have made margarines under at least three names: Sachsen Ruhn, LEA and… Wanda! Mystery solved, thank you.

Words: Jeroen Booij; picture: Audi PR / Oldting.de
 

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