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They were too dangerous. Not enough protection for drivers and passengers in a crash.
My first car was a used beetle. I think it was a 64. It was red. Loved it. Rolled it taking a turn too fast. That was another thing wrong with them - if you got two wheels of the ground, they turned under when they came back down, and the vehicle rolled.
Another time, I was driving over Altamont Pass in CA, and the wind blew me into the fast lane. Just, bam, I was in the next lane over. Fortunately, nobody was in the way. They really were unsafe.
The heater in the original very bug came from heat produced from the engine, remember air cooled engines are like a motorcycle only heat was given off by the motor. My older is a master foreign car mechanic and his specialty was VW he had his own vw repair business. He gave me a 1959 vw bug it was a 6 volt system and I’ll tell you in the winter you had to use a propane camping heater to stay warm in that car. The heater boxes were a joke. I would set the propane heater in a old milk crate and put on passenger side floor. The gas tank was in the front you had to lift the trunk to put gas in. The best thing about the vw rear engine bug was you could take the whole motor out in a half hour if you were fast like my brother was.
As noted, there was a heating system that used the exhaust system (not the exhaust) to heat outside air and bring it into the cabin. If worked in most places but if you were in the northern US, it could be inadequate.
There were aftermarket gasoline powered heaters that did a much better job. The would install in the front trunk.
As noted, there was a heating system that used the exhaust system (not the exhaust) to heat outside air and bring it into the cabin. If worked in most places but if you were in the northern US, it could be inadequate.
When I had a VW Karmann-Ghia, I installed the heater blower from a '55 Chevy in the ductwork for the driver's side heater outlets, and an under-dash switch to activate it. It helped quite a bit on the driver's side, but in order to get adequate heat on the passenger side, I would have had to do the same work on the other side of the car.
Unfortunately, the electrical system was too anemic to be able to power two blowers going simultaneously, so I lived with this half-assed improvement for a couple of years until I sold the car.
Yes, it had a "Heat" & even a "Defrost". It was a 1967 ragtop (didn't help).
I probably got more Carbon Monoxide than actual warmth (maybe the ragtop did help). I had to use a little battery powered heat blower thingy for the windshield.
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