How does the idea of a rugged, off-road Bug strike you? Well, imagine no longer - the Volkswagen Beetle Dune concept has made its debut at the ongoing 2014 NAIAS in Detroit.
Even before we start throwing some numbers at you, you can see it's bigger all-round than the standard Beetle, and it is - being 4,290 mm long, 1,856 mm wide and 1,536 mm tall, the Dune is 12 mm longer, 48 mm wider and 50 mm taller.
Track width's also gone up by 29 mm to 1,607 mm up front and 1,573 mm out back, and filling up those two-part extended wheel arches are 19-inch alloys shod in 255/45 series rubber. Bridging the two wheel arches are a brushed aluminium sill panel into which a chrome-plated protective underbody panel sits.
The face gets a redesigned bumper with a black honeycomb intake flanked by trapezoidal inserts that incorporate semi-circular fog lamps and slim indicators, both LED. Although it doesn't seem so, the bonnet is more bulbous - the middle has been raised, and there are air vents on each side.
Round the back, there's a reworked bumper and not one, but two spoilers. The one on the roof doubles up as a ski-rack (for sand skis as well as snow skis, in case you were wondering). That smart yellow-orange metallic paint's called 'Arizona'.
The interior's largely familiar from the production car, but with a passenger grab-handle in place of the 'Beetle box'. The middle of the dash is dominated by a high-res 7.7-inch touch-screen.
Back in January 2000, Volkswagen premiered the New Beetle Dune concept premiered in Los Angeles. While that was far from a production possibility, the Beetle Dune is very much based on the current production model, using the same 2.0 TSI engine with 210 PS and a six-speed DSG. And there's an XDS electronic diff lock, too.
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