The overhang is the same, just the curved corners tricking the eye in the perspective shot. Curved corners are supposed to make the car look smaller, as you can never see the full extension of the car. Volvo is good at this – look at the XC90, and you notice that you will never see a corner, just surfaces curving away.
(Sorry about the Volvo reference )

Someone a GM had an idea of who inside is a Djup Strupe to Swade, and leaked the pic to that person to see if it ended up on the net. It’s a game that Apple is known to be good at…

I hope you did not take my reliability-question to serious.
The amount of comments on these 9-1 entries shows our interest in the product, regardless of number of doors, a real 9X or cgi or a false cheater under the sheet, etc. .

Some thoughts on ‘Differenz’:

Concerning the ‘Differenz’ between the two 9-X’s : it can be both a matter of perspective & a matter of design phase.
If you are involved in the design process, in the formmaking of the object – I guess it is with cars the same as with other things – you constantly question the results you’ve got so far by looking at the object from every possible angle. The medium you’re using doesn’t matter , it can be done by real 3D-model (clay, cardbord,…), virtual 3D-model (cgi, cadcam, …) and 2D-sketches and drawings. And while constantly questioning, discussing and comparing a new result with the previous ones you make design-decissions.

So if you take a good look at the picts above you can see more differences than the front overhang, i.e. the B-pillar has at the connection with the front door a slightly different angle, the corners of this pillar in connnection with roof on the upper side and door on the under side are in the picture above straight corners and in the picture below they have very tiny roundings, in the one picture the whipers are sunken under the bonnet or simply not there, the front wheelarches in the picture above are more prononciated, … .

So i guess it can be both a different angle & perspective and a different time of design process the pictures are taken from.
You’ll have to know in designing things there is always a matter of (extreme) time pressure & various deteminating factors & continous layers like functionality, technicality, etc. – so not just the generating of mere images, what makes the process of designing something different than the process of making art.

Maybe it is just very clever stunt from saab using the 9X, because it diminishes the amount of journo- & hobby-photoshoppers to make scoops for sites like this one or magazines …
And surely the 9-1 will have some reference towards the 9-X. There is nothing wrong with that, even if it is 8 years old. A good piece of design is in its general form always timeless, only details tell more about a certain period or fashion of a time.

I believe that you’re right – I believe that the blue-ish rendering, and i call it a rendering, is a snapshot from a surface modeling program taken soon before the final sendoff, and at this point, details such as the ones you pointed out were not put in yet.

I sure hope that there will be something behind this, and 9-1 will have some design ideas from 9x. At least it get´s shown with 9x and Aero x and not with 9-4x for example, which is also a concept presented in Geneva.

Bueller….. Bueller…..?

How about this thought – Saab is trying to find out Swade’s inside contacts. So what do you do – you release some fake shots to a few Saab employees and see if they get posted on TS?

I think we’ve established pretty well that these are the same car. No problem with that. However, I have to disagree that the difference here is merely perspective. For one, on the image that I used, there is no fuel filler hole like there is at the back of the second one. The button used to gain entry to the car is present on the door in the first image, but invisible on the second (at this resolution, at least). Window wipers are in one but not the other.

I think these are from different stages of the design process but am willing to be proven wrong. It won’t be the first time today

Appreciate the insight you’ve got there, though. Good stuff.

This discrepancy is due to the modeling program using a bit too much perspective. Different cameras can capture the same image very different ways. Witness these two images of the Ferrari Enzo, and look at how much the front overhang differs. This is due to different lens properties.

http://www.ferraris-online.com/cars/FE-ENZO-134282/images/P007Web.jpg

http://www.khodrobazar.com/photo_gallery/albums/10001/normal_Ferrari-Enzo-Doors-Open-Side-Track.jpg

While I do not expect everyone to take my word on this, I can offer you my assurance that both of these images are indeed from the same 9x concept, not showing two variants of it. All of the other details are exactly the same. The trick at work here is something designers call ‘plan view’ or ‘plan shape.’ This refers to the amount of curve that is given to the front or rear bumpers. When a package (the technical engineering hardpoints of a vehicle) require a vehicle to have a rather large (and often ugly) front overhang, this is often disguised by giving the car a lot of plan view (or wrap). The Audi R8 is a great example of this. In true side view, the car looks like its going to scrape its chin off, but in real life, this is not the case. When designers do not give a car enough plan view shape, an akward proportion can result, witness my 9000.
http://www.saab.lt/klubas/gallery/918.jpg

To summarize, these are definately both images of the 9x, not the upcoming 9-1.

Hope I’ve cleared this up a bit.

Team being Swade plus all of us.

Thanks to Swade and the rest of you for your insight, without both, this would not be nearly as interesting!