Implicit conversion is less than bless

A quick example on how frivolous and to all appearances useful design of a C++ class can kick the rear aspect of your personality hard. In Unicode-enabled code using wchar_t as character data carrier:

#include <comutil.h>
#include <sstream>
int main()
{
   std::wostringstream oss;
   _bstr_t str(L"abc");
   oss << str;
}

Now, remembering that wchar_t has made it into the C++ ages ago, hich version of operator<<is called here?

The example above is equivalent to the following code:

std::wostringstream oss;
_bstr_t str(L"abc");
oss << static_cast<char*>(str);

Possibly, it is because of failure of template argument deduction as specified in C++/14.8.2.¹⁄₄. I’d be interested to learn if this interpretation is correct or why, if it is not.