I stand corrected and TIL :) That's pretty awesome actually, pity that the 6809 wasn't more popular in the home computer era (but looking at the price compared to the Z80 or even 6502 it's understandable - $37 versus $9 for Z80 and $6 for the 6502 in 1980 according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6809).

I worked in embedded systems design through this era. I don't remember ever hearing of a design using one 8-bit cpu vs another due to chip cost. Those Wikipedia numbers also seem suspect.

i wasn't aware of the price difference, and at the time i owned a 6809-based system - a dragon32 (a sort of UK re-branded version of the tandy colco). i wasn't fussed about the MUL instruction, but i simply loved all of the addressing modes that thing had.