Superseding the Auto Union 1000, it was the last model branded as a DKW by the manufacturer and also one of the last West German production car equipped with a two-stroke engine, the last being the Goggomobil.

Since the axle takes up a lot of space, the fuel tank is housed behind it in the floor of the trunk, whilst the spare wheel is located behind the rear seat back.

While the DKW Junior was still the most successful small car in West Germany at the time, customers started to find the two-stroke engine to be inconvenient and generally outdated.

Another problem, especially of the F102 model, was the fact that the three-cylinder with 400 cm³ displacement per cylinder had reached the end of its development possibilities and even larger two-stroke engines were not established in the automotive industry.

Halfway through spring kinematics, the accelerator pedal was subjected to a significantly increased resistance to give the driver a better feeling for the power he was demanding from the engine.

Such an accelerator pedal with a pressure point was also later used in the Trabant 601, whose fuel consumption was also regarded unfavorably high due to the two-stroke cycle in relation to the engine output.

For test drives with the six-cylinder engine built by Heinkel, the F102 was converted to radial tires of size 165–14; consumption was 9.5 liters of regular petrol per 100 kilometers.