In the case of “The People’s Car” that one is under engineered IMO.
I had friends in the 80s that loved those things in the form of sand buggies.....me? I never understood a car with no A/C......ESPECIALLY where you and I live.
Inexpensive yes.....comfortable in extreme temperatures....not so much.
Ever hear Jerry Clower’s VW Bug story?..................
Oops, it was Wendy Bagwell, not Jerry Clower. They both sound alike!............
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0s9144hn5I
As for steep hills; well, it taught patience.
I had a brother-in-law, an old hippie who told me that back in the Sixties, he and his friends in a VW had their engine seize up on a journey, and they simply removed their engine on the fly, went to another VW right there in the parking lot, took out the engine and installed it in their own car and took off.
I admit-I had never done any work on a Volkswagen, so I was not in the least bit skeptical, but until right now, I had no idea what was involved. I just watched a YouTube video on how to do it, and am even less skeptical. It looks like something one could do in the timeframe someone parked their car and disappeared to go grocery shopping.
That was a completely scurrilous hippie thing to do. But there are people like that, no doubt.
The other experience was back in 1979, where we experienced one of the coldest winters in memory up here, and even Boston Harbor froze. I was home on Leave, and we had a big family get-together. At some point, a bunch of us decided to drive about fifty miles north to visit an uncle, but...we could not get anyone’s car to start.
At the time, I was driving an MG Midget, which notoriously had difficulty starting in very cold weather, but oddly-it was the only one that could start, but since we couldn’t all go in that car, we used it to jump my brother’s Volkswagen.
So, five of us piled into that car and drove, but the heater was completely non-functional (I think someone said the ‘heater box’ was totally rusted out, the rest of the car had large rust holes that let the bitter air into the car.
We got probably about 30 miles, and had to turn around and go back, it was so bitter cold inside of that car. Years later, there was a scene in the movie “The Martian” where the guy, trapped on Mars, tried to see how far he could go in his vehicle without heat, and had to finally call it and turn around, the cold was too extreme.
When I saw it, it reminded me of that cold winter back in 1978-79 as we drove with shivering bodies and chattering teeth out West on Route 2 in Massachusetts. We all had that same experience in that little Volkswagen, looking at each other and concluding nearly wordlessly we HAD to turn around and abandon our journey!
Now, when I think Volkswagen, I think only of engines stolen in parking lots and rusted “heater boxes”!
They were designed for Europe where AC was not really needed. And believe it or not there are still a lot of people who are tough enough to live without AC. Even in the desert southwest with temps up to 120 degrees. It is actually healthier to be acclimated to natural temps.