Start with what the DKW F89 is: a 2-door saloon / 3-door 'Universal' Estate / 2-door cabriolet with 684 , built from 1950 to 1954, at the height of the post-war boom. What it meant takes a little longer.
How it came about
The DKW Meisterklasse (English: "Master Class"), also known as the DKW F89, is a compact front-wheel drive saloon manufactured by Auto Union GmbH between 1950 and 1954. It was the first passenger car to be manufactured by the new Auto Union company in West Germany following the re-establishment of the business in the west in 1949.
The hardware
The engine is 684 . On the scales it comes to 860 –. Drive goes through a 3-speed manual / 4-speed manual (offered from 1953). The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 2350 mm (2-door) / 2450 mm (Estate). These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the DKW line-up the DKW F89 has a clear place: it replaced the DKW F10; the factory was Düsseldorf, Germany. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Chevrolet Bel Air, the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Citroën 2CV. Its DKW stablemates include the DKW 3=6 and the DKW CD Manzel.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the DKW F89 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.