The best bike lock I ever had was a crappy bike. When I was in college, I did not have much money so I bought a used bike. It had a 3 speed Stermy Archer shifter that did not work right, you had to set it in just the right place or it would not work, the pedals will slip. I never locked it I just left the shifter in the wrong place. A couple of times I would notice my bike laying on the ground a few feet from where I left it, I always hoped that someone tried to steal it, the pedals slipped on them and they landed their crotch on the cross bar.
Sounds like your Sturmey Archer worked just fine. The most common older model had a position between normal and high gear where the driver was disengaged from the hub, and there were stories of crashses due to slipping out of gear while honking up a hill.
I have those old hubs on a couple of my bikes.
Quite agreed about getting a crappy bike. A bike can be quite ride-able yet still look crummy.
I had a similar townie bike in Toronto. You had to sit on the seat properly or it would flip up, and the cranks were bent, yielding an awful cadence. It was fine for the ~5 block area I used it in. I always said whoever would steal this bike would get what they deserve.
I also used to spray paint my bike with high visibility colours and do a very bad job of it. The high vis made you safer around cars, and the bad paint job made the bikes less resellable.
