People used to do such ugly comprises in 60's and 70's, it's 2013 mate. There are common ways to do anything better than others.
Yup, it works fine with Vans and SUVs for they don't actually have a room for condenser units in covered compartments. Beetles do.
exactly, i'm actually considering it in a way that the condenser is installed inside the trunck with a an air-induction duct which could be over-hood e.g. Camaros/v8/force-induced surf/vigo etc. This wouldn't compromise the looks of the vehicle, there wouldn't be any ugly looking hood cutting required at front either. Yes, ventilation for the air inducted via fans to condenser shall be a bit tricky, but again, a duct could route it outside the trunk too.
P.S. the above could actually be the perfect option for two setups:
1. Commonly available split units (cabin unit that has the blower and cooling-coil built within the assy)
2. Regular air-conditioning setup (the ones we have in our modern era cars nowadays). In beetle's case, it'd be the same (just a bit of trunk space would be sacrificed, i don't have a problem), the condenser, as said above, would be placed inside the trunk, whereas the cooling coil with DUCTED blower box (3 grilled-ducts to be exact) would be inserted into the dash-plate; 1 each for the passenger (glove box area) and driver (rhs speaker side), one in the middle for rear.
The No.1 is cost-effective. The No.2 would cost around 40ish k but would be a high-performance, fixed installation that would actually work much better than a reborn, for instance.