Way back in the late 70's, A/C wasn't even heard of on small displacement European engines. And you know that you couldn't sell a car in the U.S without A/C. Now to answer your question, a very small group of us designed and engineered an A/C system with a local U.S supplier. I can tell you that this project was a BIG challenge on this particular FWD application with a longitudinal drivetrain and the transmission located in front of the engine. To make a long story short, you had no drive of the crankshaft to run the accessories. Everything was driven off the camshaft and I mean everything, alternator, water pump, air pump and of course the newly added A/C compressor. That's a lot of load for a camshaft if you know what I mean but the marketing guys didn't care and said they had to have it. We took on the project and ended up with a fairly decent system.
Anyway, I'll let you guess as to what company, they weren't that many with this drivetrain layout. I only worked for this company for a few years but it was the most challenging and best time of my career.