This Is The Only Other Time I’ve Seen A Car Part Used As A Whole Car Face Other Than In My Head: Cold Start

So I get that even for a Cold Start, a series that doesn’t really have any rules, standards, or, let’s be honest, morals, this is kind of weird. See that image up there, from a 1950s German Blaupunkt ad? See how the face of the radio is re-purposed as the “face” of the car, with the volume and tuning knobs standing in for headlamps, and the tuning dial for the grille, and so on? Sure you do. It’s a fun, cute ad, and I’m sure we’ve all seen this sort of phenomenon, right? I mean, I know I have. And, so far, as best I can tell, this is one of the very few published examples of this car-part-as-car-face out there – aside from the at least two times I’ve written about it.

Perhaps it has come up a lot more and I’ve not seen examples; I kind of hope so, as it often feels so obvious and blatant I don’t know how people haven’t used it more.

Here, let’s look at the full ad image:

I mean, it’s charming as hell; in fact, if you have any sort of charm allergies, you should probably close this window and wash immediately. Our insurance doesn’t cover charm-related allergic reactions, you see. We don’t need that kind of hassle.

In this example, the radio face works really well; the tuning buttons stand in for the bumper, too! It feels extremely car fascia-like.

The other examples I’ve used before are similarly good, I think, like these dome light units used on GMs (and similar ones were found on Ford and Mopar cars):

The Blaupunkt radio feels more like a ’60s era car, though. Like a Falcon or Rambler or something. The other example I had was a taillight used on an old Alfa Romeo that looked oddly like the front of a Jeep:

There should be a name for whatever this phenomenon is: a small thing that’s part of a larger thing that looks like a larger part of the larger thing. The word synecdoche means a part of something used to represent the whole, like when people refer to their car as their “wheels.” So maybe we can call this, um, automotive visage-synecdoche. That rolls off the tongue!

I’ll think of something better. But after I publish this, because it’s late, dammit!