IFA F8 History

The IFA F8 was a direct continuation of the prewar DKW F8, assembled at the former Horch/Auto Union factory in Zwickau after the Soviet military administration placed it under state control in 1948. The car used the same 684 cc (variously calculated as 690 cc) two-cylinder two-stroke engine, front-wheel drive, and three-speed gearbox with a lockable freewheel as its prewar predecessor — engineering that felt dated almost immediately.

Body styles available postwar included the two-door sedan, cabriolet, estate, and a panel van. The basic outer skin combined steel panels with fabric-over-timber framing in the central sections — a legacy construction method carried over from the 1930s. After 1953 some body panels were replaced with duroplast (a resin-bonded composite), anticipating the Duroplast-bodied Trabant that would follow. Some F8s were fitted with more modern coachwork by Baur of Stuttgart, giving a small subset a less archaic appearance.

More than 26,000 F8s were built before the IFA passenger-car badge was retired in 1956. At that point the Zwickau plant transitioned to the P70 (a partly Duroplast-bodied successor using the same running gear), which in turn paved the way for the Trabant under the Sachsenring marque. The F8 is today a rare survivor, collected as an artefact of immediate postwar East German industry.