Synecdoche is the figure of speech in which a part comes to mean the whole. In product design, it means that you’ve created something so good that everybody agrees yours is the yardstick. You don’t ask for a tissue, you ask for a Kleenex. You don’t ask for hook and loop fasteners, you ask for Velcro. You don’t ask for diamorphine, you ask for Heroin. Okay, bad example, but when you have sand to conquer, you ask for a dune buggy. The reasons for that are many, but among the biggest is the Beetle’s early dominance of the Baja 1000, a grueling race down the Baja peninsula in Mexico that first started 50 years ago. To celebrate the race’s milestone anniversary, Volkswagen trucked some off-road Beetle-based vehicles to the high desert outside of Barstow, California to let us see all of the wonderful things that can happen when flat-fours meet sand… read more >
