Isn’t the whole thing just a VW Fox chassis with the bug body on it?
I don’t know, I owned a 91 Fox GL... it was a great little car....
Since you mentioned "thing", the VW Thing used a combination of existing VW designs, including the Karman Ghia.
Not that you'd notice...without being a real car aficionado...
That would be my guess, but they are pretty bad cars, especially the automatic.