Round the world – and back
Of all the strange cultural and economic situations that resulted from the post-war division of East and West Germany, the story of this small pre-war DKW F9 prototype has to be one of the most peculiar. It travelled far and wide from its origin in Zwickau, in the former German Democratic Republic. And, as teams in the East and West raced to rebuild, by 1949 production versions of this car had appeared, virtually unchanged, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It was small, practical and advanced for 1939, with a three-cylinder two-stroke engine and front-wheel drive. As Auto Union’s answer to Volkswagen’s Beetle, it was intended to sell for an aggressive sub-1000 Reichsmark price. And it could have been a world-beater.
But before we get too embedded in history, we should introduce the star of our story: Audi Tradition’s beautifully restored F9 prototype. One of two (or possibly three) known to survive, it resides today in Audi’s Museum Mobile in Ingolstadt. It’s clear just how close the post-war production DKWs stayed to the original concept, with underpinnings that dated back to 1931.
DKW had made quite a success of producing inexpensive transportation during the 1930s. Its front-wheel-drive (F for ) F-series cars, all built with wood-framed bodies and 20bhp twin-cylinder two-stroke engines, started in
