Recently Volkswagen of America completely redesigned their website www.vw.com, literally making the search box the center of the homepage. The site search is powered by a Google Search Appliance and they've done a lot of cool UI development so that you can see the most frequently searched for terms as well as search results in an expanding drop down window, without leaving the homepage of the site. Besides being a slick design, putting me in control of the site made me think that VW probably applied the same user-centric approach to designing their cars and made the site feel less marketing-y and more education focused. Take the site for a spin.
