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”!
“I was driving an MG Midget, which notoriously had difficulty starting in very cold weather”
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Ha, MGs were notorious in general.
British automobiles in general have always had a bit of a poor reputation for quality.
Something I learned a few years ago about MGs is replacing engine accessories such as alternators and starters with Japanese manufacturered ones can improve on reliability quite a bit.
Yes, they are very simple and easy to work on. That was the whole idea. One person can do it by themselves with just a few wood blocks stacked under the engine to bolt it back up.
During the Bug days in Germany you could go to a repair shop and they could just remove and replace the engine in an hour. So the shops all had whole engines ready and waiting.
They were based on simplicity, practicality and reliability. Simple and practical sometimes requires sacrifice of comfort. So no AC and yes the heaters suffered if they were not working right. But it too was only an hour job to replace the exhaust heater boxes and they were extremely cheap. They are just stamped sheet metal and just “clam shell” around the exhaust manifolds.
But in turn one of the most comfortable small car long trips I made was in a Bug because of how the seats are made and sit off the floor more like a pickup truck. You just “sit up” in it nice and comfortable compared to most small cars where you are almost sitting on the floor. :)
When I was a teenager, I worked at a shop that specialized in VW’s. I could change a clutch by myself in 35minutes.
My dad and I could walk out the door and have a bug engine sitting on the ground with one trip to the tool box and never have to say a word in 1/2 hour. I don’t know how much faster we could have done it if we tried to hustle or cut corners. No power or air tools involved.