In the late hours of January 16, 1941 one of the most enigmatic leaders of the Indian freedom struggle Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose conned the British intelligence and escaped from his house in Calcutta to wage a war on the Raj. 

Netaji’s nephew, Sisir Kumar Bose, who played an instrumental role in Netaji’s escape from Calcutta to Gomoh, in the book ‘The Great Escape’, narrates the beginning of the escape: “As I saw the front-gate opening up in front of me, I started the car and making a hell of a noise, drove out without losing much time. According to his instructions, I took at first a southerly direction although our destination was to the North. We did not find anything within any dangerously short distance from us. The CID people were comfortably settled under blankets on a makeshift wooden bed at the junction of Elgin Road and Woodburn Road. They have chosen this strategic site in order to be able to keep watch on the two Bose houses simultaneously and in case of necessity get to the front of either house without losing time. While we drove out, they were clearly not awake.”

And it was in a car called the ‘Wanderer’ that the great escape was made possible. With Netaji’s 21-year-old nephew at the wheel, the Wanderer travelled a distance of around 300 kilometres to reach Gomoh (now in Jharkhand). This was only the first leg of Netaji’s escape from India. He would eventually reach Delhi and then move to Peshawar, thereafter travelling to the Soviet Union through Afghanistan, to finally reach Germany in April 1941. It was here that Netaji met Adolf Hitler.

In 1937, the Bose family had bought the Wanderer at a princely sum of Rs. 4,650. While purchased by Netaji's elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose, however, the Wanderer was registered in the name of his son Sisir Kumar Bose who at that time was a student of medicine at the Calcutta Medical College and used this car for his daily commute. The Wanderer continued to remain a daily runner till 1957 after which the lack of availability of spares resulted in the sedan being grounded. Dr. Sisir Kumar Bose founded the Netaji Research Bureau in 1957. He donated the Wanderer to the museum in 1958. Since then it has been put on display at the Netaji Bhavan on Elgin Road.

“The car had bluffed us a few times on the road. Many old timers would have memory of seeing my husband and I push the car on Rashbehari Avenue. Nonetheless, it kept us going. When I got married in 1955, the car was still being used regularly. My husband and I would often drive down to various places in the car”, fondly recalled Ms. Krishna Bose, wife of Dr. Sisir Kumar Bose, in an earlier interaction with Kolkata on WHEELS magazine. 

With Netaji’s 120th birth anniversary arriving in January 2017, it was decided around the middle of 2016 to get the Wanderer restored. The Calcutta unit of Audi had assigned this daunting task of restoration to Pallab Roy and Sourav Roy of Father and Son Restorations who took the challenge head on and successfully restored the Wanderer within the next six-seven months with a commendable outcome. The car was later unveiled in the presence of the then honourable President of India – Shri Pranab Mukherjee on January 23, 2017.

The Wanderer W24 was a middle market car introduced by Auto Union under the Wanderer brand in 1937. The car was powered by a four-cylinder four-stroke engine displacing 1,767 cc driving the rear wheels via a four-speed gear box. Claimed maximum power output of four cylinder flathead engine was 42 PS achieved at 3,400 rpm.

The W24’s structural basis was a box frame chassis. At the back it employed a swing axle arrangement copied from the popular small cars produced by sister brand DKW of Auto Union.

At a time when some of the manufacturer’s larger models featured a twelve-volt electrical system, the W24 still made do with a six-volt arrangement. The car was offered as a four-seater saloon with two or four doors. In addition, approximately 300 cabriolet versions were produced. More than eighty years later few of these cabriolet version survive: those that do are much prized by collectors.

By 1940 when the increasing intensity of the war enforced an end to passenger car production, approximately 23,000 Wanderer W24s had been produced. But needless to say that the historical significance of this particular example outweighs its uniqueness for it association with one of India’s greatest sons.

Fact File: 1937 Wanderer
Year of Manufacture: 1937
Registration Number: BLA 7169
Number of Cylinder: 4
Horse Power: 13.9
Vehicle Type: Sedan
Unladen Weight: 2534 Wu
Chassis Number    : 106256
Engine Number: 106319