You seem to be telling me that what was normal flying for a 80 hour PPL thirty years back is likely to be beyond the capabilitys of todays average PPL/IMC holder, maybe we're you live but were I teach we would not put a pilot up for the IMC test if his/ her skills were not up to flying a PAR with an AI as attitude reference, those who are doing well usually get the do a PAR on limited panel ( that one has both the pilot and controler working quite hard!)
In a training environment with an instructor / examiner on board as a planned exercise it is one thing, under the stress of a real full on electrical failure in solid IMC with a hand held VHF at a random point in time unexpectedly I wager that would challenge a substantial % of IFR pilots and lead to a reasonable amount of botched and fatal landings.
Fortunately complete failure of this type in the modern aircraft I am trained to fly it is to the best of my knowledge an extremely unlikely scenario.
Also I do not mind admitting that I am so rusty on flying with traditional instruments that I would not even consider going IMC without a large amount of re training.
Kudos to you if you are totally competent and capable with a hand held VHF but for me I am certainly not and do not intend to have this as an option.