I think a lot of VW 'consumer BS' goes back to the days of the Air Cooled type 1's, that is, ' the beetle ' It was a good car, don't get me wrong!
Here was an engine that was in the rear, air cooled, horizontally opposed, etc, etc. Just not the same as a Ford Flat Head or a Chevy Stovebolt 6. Oh, and you needed them COMMIE Metric Wrenches to work on it.
Heres another one. In Canada, we got our first taste of Subaru's in the mid to late '70's. We liked them right away. Different story for the US. In the early '60's, Malcolm Bricklin introduced the Subaru 360 into the US. This was like a souped up golf cart, never mind a Road Going Car! Sales of Subaru's in Canada per capita outstripped sales in the USA, during it's reintroduction in the '70's. Subaru 360 soured US consumers.
Malcolm Bricklin went on to Hose the Nova Scotia Government in the '70's with his Bricklin Automobile.