The Development of the DKW F89P 'New Meisterklasse'

In May 1945 Auto-Union AG was only a little over twenty one years old, but it seemed unlikely the company would see twenty two. The company's factories in Saxony were all within the Soviet Occupation Zone and, as designated war industries, were scheduled for requisition as part of the post-war reparations regime. Soviet engineering crews arrived in August 1945 to inventory their assets, dismantle them and ship them to Soviet Union. Many of the company's executives, uncertain of their future under Soviet occupation, fled to the west and scattered to the four winds. The future for the company looked very bleak indeed.

Of all Auto-Union's factories, the Wandererwerke in Seigmar fared worst, having been badly bombed in 1944. The Wandererwerkes had been given over entirely to military production from 1940. 

Auto-Union's managing director, Dr Richard Bruhn, and deputy director Dr Carl Hahn, found themselves in Bavaria after the war and a core of former Auto-Union management and technicians began to coalesce around them. The sales and service office in Munich became a temporary headquarters and an audit of the company's assets in the western zones was undertaken. This primarily consisted of a number of sales offices and a smattering of service and repair shops. There was general agreement however, that Auto Union's operations should be restarted. Of all Germany's automobile companies, Auto-Union held a unique advantage over its rivals - due to the Wehrmacht's disdain for two-stroke engines, DKW cars had rarely been commandeered for military use and some 60,000 DKW cars and motorcycles were still registered on the road in Germany and western Europe, and all of these would need regular service and repair. Agents were sent out to all the offices and workshops to begin gathering in spare parts, tools and design drawings.
https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2022/07/state-of-german-motor-industry-1945.html

In Oldenburg, in the British Occupation Zone north of Bavaria, former technical director William Werner had independently established a repair and spare parts company for Auto-Union vehicles. The establishment of a separate 'Auto-Union' highlighted the ambigious legal situation within post-war Germany where each occupying power instituted their own legal regime. No one knew at this time whether there would be a single Auto-Union for all Germany or independent successor companies in each of the occupation zones?

Auto-Union managing director Dr Richard Bruhn (left) is joined by motoring journalist Werner Ostwald, August Horch and Dr Carl Hahn (right) inspecting the new F89P in 1950.
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Recognising the great difficulties of providing spare parts supply in the western zone, Drs Bruhn and Hahn wrote to Auto Union AG executive director, Hans Schuler in Chemnitz and proposed the establishment of a spare parts manufacturing facility in the west. With the Chemnitz factories stripped of almost all machinery and unable to meet spare parts demand in the Soviet zone, Schuler agreed and organised to send design specifications for DKW engines and parts to Bruhn and Hahn. Thanks to his personal prestige and political contacts, Bruhn was able to secure loans and line of credit from local banks in order to restart operations in the west. Then things went off the rails. While visiting his parent's farm in Fleckeby, Dr Bruhn was arrested by the British. He would spend the next two years in prison without formal charges, before being released. The experience would permanently damage his health in later years. Without Bruhn's influence, many Auto Union personnel, including Carl Hahn, drifted away from the project and took up jobs where they could. Nevertheless, three former executives decided to press ahead without him and registered a new company, Central Store for Auto-Union Spare Parts Ingolstadt Gmbh. Dr Schuler and the Auto Union AG in Chemnitz formally licensed the Central Store to manufacturer Auto Union spare parts on the AG's behalf.

A later photograph of DKW Schnellasters leaving the Central Store building.

The Munich sales office was not suitable as a manufacturing site, so the Central Parts Store was set up in a former army commissary and storehouse in Ingolstadt, about an hour north of Munich. Ingolstadt had a pre-existing steel industry so there was a good supply of skilled metals workers on-hand. It was also a major transport hub with good road and rail connections and it had luckily avoided major destruction from bombing. The city administration encouraged the company to relocate by making the commissary buildings available on good terms. The premises were spacious and adequate as a parts depot, but not suitable for an auto factory. This would be sufficient for the time being.

The Central Store commisariat building in Ingolstadt

In 1947, Hans Schuler came to Ingolstadt to inspect the operation and formalise arrangements between the Central Parts Store and Auto Union AG. Schuler was looking to restart Auto Union vehicle and so granted the Parts Store a license to begin manufacturing complete DKW motorcycles and cars. Independently, the team at Ingolstadt had already begun working on a version of the DKW RT125 motorcycle, which they had reverse engineered from stocks of spare parts, while designer Kurt Schwenk and his team were working on what would become the Schnellaster van. Talks commenced between the Parts Store and Auto Union AG (Chemnitz) about jointly producing a version of the prewar DKW F8 car and teams were sent to Spandau to see about restarting body production. Despite these positive developments, relations between the eastern and western zones were soon about to degenerate and the relationship between the old Auto Union and its western counterpart was about to turn from one of cooperation to bitter rivalry.

Desperate times require desperate measures. The Central Store had no room for a full production line so the final fitting out of Schnellaster vans was done out in the open in the courtyard.https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-development-of-dkw-schnellaster.html

By mid-1948, problems at the Central Parts Store had become acute. Kurt Schwenk's Schnellaster was finally ready to begin production, but there was nowhere within the sprawling commissary complex where a production line could be effectively set up. Without presses, body panels were stamped out at nearby carosseries and then shipped to Ingolstadt. Chassis and engines were assembled in a former stables building partially assembled before being wheeled out into an open air courtyard where they were fitted out and finished off. Motorcycle production wasn't any better. As there were no suitable machines, frames and engines for the RT125 motorcycle were outsourced to other manufacturers and then the parts were assembled on a production line set up on the first floor of one of the store buildings. A proper manufacturing plant was required and this required a significant increase in capital, but in order to secure that capital there were major legal problems to address.

The old Auto Union AG in Chemntiz was a 50% shareholder in the Central Store and, as the AG was under the socialist regime in East Germany, western banks were concerned that any assets the company held could be seized by the East German authorities if they proceeded with their nationalization plans.  Secondly, the Central Parts Store itself had been established in somewhat dubious legal circumstances. Former managing director, Dr Richard Bruhn, had been a prime mover of the original Central Parts Store and had funded and guaranteed the loans required to get the project off the ground. However, despite assurances to that his interests would be preserved, he'd been cut out of the company when he was arrested. In 1948 Bruhn was released from prison and began criticizing the arrangements made in his absence. Bruhn established an independent working group of former Auto Union executives and financiers to review the company's legal authority and plan for Auto Union's return to automobile production. Such was Bruhn's prestige that the Central Parts Store's bankers declared that there could be no Auto Union without Bruhn at the helm and so a new company was registered in Ingoldstadt called Auto Union GmbH with Bruhn as chairman of the board. Auto Union GmbH then took over the operations of the Central Parts Store using funding from Auto Union AG in Chemnitz. Then, on 17 August 1948, the East German government deregistered Auto Union AG and struck the company from the commercial register. All Auto Union AG's assets in the Soviet zone were nationalised under the IFA. In Ingolstadt, Auto Union Gmbh's lawyers scrambled to restructure the company's shareholdings to formally sever all connections to the old Auto Union AG. The end result of all these legal shenanigans was that a new Auto Union GmbH held the reins and former Auto Union AG managing director, Richard Bruhn, was in charge.https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/05/collapse-and-reconstruction-history-of.html

The new DKW range on display at the 1949 Hannover trade show. The Schnellaster was the right vehicle at the right time, helping get Germany back on its feet.
https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-development-of-dkw-schnellaster.html

With the chaotic legal structure of Auto Union in the west now resolved, it was essential that Auto Union get a new passenger car on the market as soon as possible. The newly nationalised Auto Union AG of Chemnitz, now renamed IFA, had gained a twelve-month lead on their western rivals and production of the IFA F8 was back up and running in 1948. Foreign DKW agents began selling the IFA F8 in its stead.

Auto Union Gmbh had considered building their own version of the F8, but that had been discounted early on because the Spandau Karosseriewerkes in Berlin, where DKW's wooden car bodies had been built, was effectively inaccessible due trade and travel restrictions between the occupation zones. As an alternative, Baur Karosseriewerkes of Stuttgart, who had built bodies for Auto Union in the prewar period, presented the company with a newly designed pressed steel body that could be fitted to both a new or prewar F8 chassis. The car was very handsome and available in either hard or soft top. Initially Auto Union management were ambivalent as they felt the body was too expensive, but as the IFA F8 began to make inroads into their market, Auto Union changed their tune. The Baur-bodied car, designated the DKW F10 went on sale in 1950 but primarily targeted at the export market and foreign dealers.
https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2017/07/dkws-forgotten-model-dkw-f10.html

The F10 would be a short-lived affair. In fact, less than 200 of the new F10s would be built before Auto-Union withdrew them from sale in favor of their new flagship vehicle - the DKW F89P 'New Meisterklasse.' Baur continued to privately sell the bodies to owners of older cars as a replacement.


The New Meisterklasse Comes Together
Although the Schnellaster and the Meisterklasse share the designation F89, they are in fact very different vehicles. The Schnellaster had a newly designed ladder chassis and torsion bar rear suspension that allowed a low, flat rear floor. It also had a different spec engine, carburettor and gearbox that exchanged higher torque for lower speed. The Meisterklasse used the prewar F8 trapezoid chassis, which widened towards the rear of the car, provided better stability and road handling than the older central rail chassis of the F7.

Although commonly described in the literature as the 'prewar' engine, the two cylinder 700cc two-stroke motor of the F89 series was an improvement over its prewar predecessor. The new, postwar engine had been reverse engineered from stocks of prewar engines and virtually all components were new and very slightly different. The prewar steel head was replaced with an aluminium head, which improved compression. The addition of a fuel pump and a new downdraft Solex BIC32 carburetor increased horsepower from 20 to 23 HP. It was still quite meagre but it's interesting to note that DKW's F9 prototype triple cylinder 900cc engine of 1940 only put out 28 horsepower. Every year small changes were made to the engine to simplify manufacture and improve performance. From 1953 the combustion chambers in the aluminum head were altered to squeeze out one more horsepower.

The electrical system too was updated several times. A distributor unit was installed on some early models, but then replaced with the prewar ignition coil and stators. The prewar motorcycle-style multi-plate clutch was originally used with a three-speed gearbox from 1950 to 1953. This would be replaced with a single plate dry clutch in late 1953 when a four speed gearbox was introduced,, however, the four speed was initially reserved for the export model and German customers had to make do with the three speed.

The biggest challenge for Auto Union Gmbh was what body would be fitted to the car. After finishing the Schnellaster project, Kurt Schwenk had turned his attention to a new pontoon-style car design, which would become the ill-fated FX project. Then, out of the blue Auto Union had a stroke of extraordinary luck. Holka of Switzerland was a karosserie (bodyworks) who had bodied Auto Union cars for the Swiss market before the war. As Switzerland was neutral, Holka's facilities were undamaged by the war but were now struggling to find sufficient work as the German manufacturers it relied on were unable to supply the necessary chassis and running gear. In 1947 Holka contacted Auto Union AG in Chemnitz and proposed that they would undertake the complete manufacture of DKW cars on their behalf. Auto Union AG saw this offer was seen as a great opportunity and granted Holka a license for the complete manufacture of DKW cars in the west, as long as they could get their car on the market within 12 months, otherwise the license arrangement would lapse.

Holka however had neither the experience nor machinery required to build the F8 chassis and engines so Auto Union AG directed them to the Central Parts Store in Ingolstadt for components and assistance. This was not welcome news at the Central Parts Store as they were already planning a return to car manufacture and did not want to assist Holka setting themselves up as a rival, so they demurred and delayed in responding. With the Central Parts Store giving them the cold-shoulder, Holka turned to William Werner's 'Central Parts Store' in Oldenburg for help. Former technical director Werner had gathered around him a small core of former Auto Union employees in the British Occupation Zone, where they sold stockpiled spare parts and provided vehicle servicing. Holka were disappointed to discover that Werner's company was even less able to assist them than the team at Ingolstadt and in 1948 the licensing arrangement with Auto Union AG lapsed. However, the whole sorry saga resulted in an amazing stroke of good fortune that would revive Auto Union GmbH's fortunes (for better or worse).

Back in 1939, when the body design of the DKW F9 was finalised, Auto Union AG had engaged the machine tool manufacturer, Allgaier, to build body presses for series production. However, with the escalation of the war, both Auto-Union and Allgaier found themselves diverted to war production and the press order was lost during the chaos of the war years. When Holka began consulting with Werner's Central Parts Store of Oldenburg, the Oldenburg company reached out to Auto Union AG's prewar parts suppliers to see if they could help manufacture the necessary chassis and engines for the Holka project. One of those companies was Allgaier. Allgaier advised they were unable to assist at this time but politely informed the Oldenburg company that Auto Union's panel presses were still at their Uhingen plant and would anyone like to collect them? The presses had been finished in 1940 but were placed in storage for a time before being moved into an open yard where they had been damaged by bombing and exposure to the weather.

The failure of the Holka project in 1948 pretty much spelt the end of the road for the Oldenburg Central Parts Store. Werner would leave the company to become managing director of the Dutch motorcycle company Berini (who built their business on DKW technology) and his Auto-Union company was eventually dissolved.
https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2022/02/berini-motorcycles.html

Without Werner, the Oldenburg firm was wound up and many of its employees moved to Auto Union GmbH, bringing with them news of the Allgaier presses. Auto Union engineers raced to Uhingen to inspect the presses and, although they were in poor condition after ten years of weathering and neglect, they were salvageable. In short order, Auto-Union was able to restore the presses and begin manufacturing F9 panels. Work commenced on melding the new body to the new chassis.

The next step was to set up a manufacturing plant to build the new car. There was talk in Ingolstadt of demolishing the commissary and building a new factory on the site, but a ground survey revealed that the commissary was built over much older miltiary fortifications, whose huge foundations would have been extremely expensive and difficult to demolish. After considering several sites, including green-field sites in farmland outside Ingolstadt, Auto Union Gmbh agreed to lease the empty and partially bombed out Rheinmetal aircraft factory in Dusseldorf. Government grants helped sweeten the deal and the enormous task of clearing the site commenced in early 1949. In six months the rubble was cleared and production was ready to commence.
https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2017/07/dkw-f89p-factory-photos.html

The new car was unveiled at the International Automobile Expo in Frankfurt in August 1950. Several different examples were on display and drew the admiration of the press and public. The exhibition cars however had not been built by Auto Union, which was still struggling to manufacture engines and chassis and the Allgaier presses had not been installed at Dusseldorf yet. Karmann Karosserie were contracted to hand-build both the sedan/limousine, four seat and two seat convertible and two seater coupe. The bodies were transported by train to Dusseldorf and assembled there.

Karmann would build the stylish four-seater convertible, which came in a handsome two-tone colour scheme, throughout the model's entire production run. Hebmuller were contracted to manufacture the sleek two-seater coupe and cabriolet versions, but in late 1952 the Hebmuller factory was destroyed in a devastating fire after only 85 examples had been built.

The Hebmuller Meisterklasse was the luxury version of the model and, given the economic circumstances of the time, did not sell particularly well. Like the contemporary 'luxury' Hebmuller Volkswagens, these were primarily targeting the export market. Few German customers had the money to afford them and very few survive.

As Hebmuller went out of business after the 1952 fire, Karmann took over the production of the two-seater models. https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2022/05/dkw-hebmuller-and-karmann-specials.html

Critics welcomed the return of DKW, but there were a few complaints about the car's performance. The engine was somewhat underpowered for the new body, but the 'fool-proof' 700cc was well known and easy to maintain. The DKW Meisterklasse was popular with customers sold very well with almost 60,000 cars built over four years. https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/04/dkw-meisterklasse-press-conference-may.html

Additional model variants were introduced over the years. A wooden body universal was introduced in 1951. A year later the universal recieved a full steel body. That year a dedicated commercial version, the Stadtleiferwagen (city delivery car), was introduced, but without rear seats or windows, it was nowhere near as popular as the multi-use universal, it struggled to find any market, becoming Auto Union's worst selling model with 182 built over four years.

https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2021/01/dkw-f89s-stadlieferwagen-auto-unions.html

Constant technical improvements to the car and its engine were undertaken. In 1953 a four-speed gearbox was offered for the export model. This change gave a welcome improvement in performance, however, it was clear that the developmental limits of the 700cc engine had been reached. Indeed, since 1951 Auto-Union engineers had been working on the development on the three-cylinder engine the car had been originally designed for. By another stroke of good fortune, Auto-Union managed to get their hands on an engine from an unexpected source.

In 1938, during the early development of the triple-cylinder engine, Auto-Union contracted the exhaust specialist, Eberspächer, to develop an exhaust system for the new car and a transverse layout test engine was assigned to Eberspächer for research purposes. Eberspächer failed to build an exhaust that met Auto-Union's expectations, so the project was reassigned to the Bertram exhaust company. By this stage, the triple engine's layout had been changed from transverse to longitudinal and no one at Auto-Union thought to retrieve the test engine from Eberspächer. Back in Chemnitz in 1948, IFA were also attempting to resurrect the F9 project. They too had no physical example of the engine, but unlike their counterparts in Ingolstadt, had access to Auto-Union's archives from which they attempted to trace any of the hundred of so pre-production engines. Eberspächer was contacted and acknowledged they still had an engine so IFA, as the successor of Auto-Union AG, claimed ownership of the engine. However, Eberspächer was in the Western Zone, and refused to return it. News reached Auto-Union Gmbh in Ingolstadt and they weighed in to claim the engine. Much correspondence was exchanged between all parties but in the end, the engine simply 'disappeared.' IFA's archives show that it was never returned to Chemnitz and they were forced to redesign the triple-cylinder engine from scratch, It appears most likely that Auto-Union obtained the Eberspächer engine and used it to reverse engineer their engine as DKW's triple has carried forward some prototyping anomalies, such as the slightly asymetrical piston positioning in the block. This was the result of the original development team grafting an extra cylinder onto a 700cc block. By necessity, IFA engineers redesigned the engine for simplicity and corrected the asymetrical layout and other issues. https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2017/07/1939-dkw-f9-prototype.html

In late 1953 Auto Union advised the new three-cylinder engine as an option for the F89P. By the beginning of 1954 the three cylinder car received a separate designation as the F91. Externally the F89P and first generation F91s were identical but for a 3=6 badge on the car's left wing, but the new engine transformed the performance of the car. It became an instant rally champion and a market leader. The F89P with four speed gearbox was downgraded to an entry level model at reduced price in the German domestic market and for export for slightly under a year before being retired formally in mid 1954. The two cylinder engine continued to be used in the Universal and city delivery van however into 1955. Neither of these two models were very strong sellers at any rate.

The DKW Meisterklasse continued to give its owners sterling if not stellar performance, but brand loyalty to Auto-Union undermined the model's survival. Meisterklasse owners were only too happy to invest in the new, improved 'Sonderklasse' and its 3=6 successors and their Meisterklasse rapidly lost their value. Most cars were eventually scrapped and consequently relatively few cars have survived of the 60,000 built.


Links to related articles:
The DKW F9 prototype: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2017/07/1939-dkw-f9-prototype.html
DKW F89 Factory photos: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2017/07/dkw-f89p-factory-photos.html
DKW's forgotten model: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2017/07/dkws-forgotten-model-dkw-f10.html
Auto-Union Collapse and Reconstruction: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/05/collapse-and-reconstruction-history-of.html
Germany's Post War Wonder Car: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2017/07/dkw-germanys-post-war-wonder-car.html
DKW F89P English owners manual:https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2018/02/dkw-f89p-new-meisterklasse-english.html
1951 Meisterklasse brochure: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2017/06/1952-dkw-meisterklasse-brochure.html