Back in the 50's a guy I knew bought a VW. This was considered somewhat weird at the time.

It had a notch in the drive pulley that we found was for hooking a starter rope into. He bought one of the ropes, would it around the pulley, made sure the transmission was out of gear, put the e-brake on, turned the ignition to 'run', set a manual choke, turned the fuel petcock to 'flow' and pulled the rope.

It was like starting a 36 hp lawnmower, but it did start on the first pull.