After wandering with Alice, the little girl of the title in one Wenders road movie, Vogler essayed another journey for the director in "Wrong Movement" (1975) as a man stymied in his roles as both poet and lover. He followed up with Wenders' masterful, leisurely and somewhat more comic "Kings of the Road" (1976), in which two men amble through Germany encountering a barren cinema culture. Vogler made such an impact in this trilogy that later filmmakers tended to capitalize on either the adventurous wanderer image (e.g., "The Left-Handed Woman" 1977) or else the moody, thoughtful side to his persona (e.g., "Last Love" 1979), without quite combining the two as successfully as Wenders. Some filmmakers deliberately used Vogler for his iconic value, as a stand-in of sorts for Wenders' political viewpoints; Margarethe von Trotta's important "Marianne and Julianne/The German Sisters" (1981) is an intriguing example of the latter.
During the 80s Vogler, whose earlier credits had been mostly West German, increasingly expanded his work into many different European cinemas, with roles in French and Italian films. He worked primarily in crime drama, with a smattering of credits in historical recreations; in "Der Havarist/Voyager" (1984), for example, he was one of three actors playing Hollywood star Sterling Hayden as he recounts his travails. In the 90s, Vogler reteamed with Wenders, conjuring up Philip Winter in the international sci-fi road picture, "Until the End of the World" (1991), the post-Cold War Berlin-set fantasy "Faraway, So Close" (1993) and the noirish "Lisbon Story" (1995).