It intended to broaden the range and claim a share of a growing market which DKW were creating with their F1 model, and its successors, for small inexpensive front wheel drive cars.

The Trumpf Junior's development was a shared responsibility between Hans Gustav Röhr (1895 – 1937) and his colleague and friend, Adler chief engineer Josef Dauben .

Power was delivered to the front wheels via a four speed manual transmission controlled by means of a column mounted lever.

The range was topped off by a version of sports model with its maximum engine power raised to 25 PS (18 kW; 25 hp), priced at 4,150 Marks.

However, all-steel car bodies were already increasingly mainstream in North America where they had been introduced before the First World War, and they offered clear advantages in terms of reduced weight, increased strength, a better view out (because the strength of the steel allowed for larger windows), and a reduced propensity to burn uncontrollably if an engine caught fire, which in the 1930s engines regularly could.

[1] In August 1939 Adler produced the 100,000th Trumpf Junior which by then had become by far the company's best selling car to that date and, as things later turned out, of all time.

The company's factory had been badly damaged in an air-raid on 24 March 1944, and after the war the site was commandeered by the US military so was no longer available to Adler.

At the 1948 Hanover Trade Fair two prototypes Trumpf Juniors were exhibited, with bodies by Karmann of Osnabrück and Wendler of Reutlingen.

[7] Production tooling was available, and there being no prospect of building the car at Adler's Frankfurt plant, an agreement was in place to use a nearby factory belonging to MAN, located on the north-eastern side of Gustavsburg.

Therefore, it would have been hard to anticipate in 1945 that by 1955 four of Germany's top five leading auto-producers from the 1930s were in some shape or form back in the business of producing cars.