Case Study : How accurate are scoops ?

Scoops of information and especially photos of new to be launched cars are the 'in' thing amongst automotive media fighting to be recognized as 'The' media to go to for information nowadays. In Japan, there are even magazines dedicated to scoops only. Amongst these, Mag-X (of Japan) has from my experience been one of the most accurate in terms of rendering of new models. Their rendering of the original 2001 Honda City was so uncanny that my 'friend' told me he personally was shocked at the almost spot-on accuracy of the rendering except for the exaggerated height (which I found out during the actual launch to be true).  Later, Mag-X was also spot on for the previous 8Gen Civic. 

On March 5th this year (2010), japanese 'scoop' site Autoten.com published a post showing the then latest scoop rendering of the new 4Gen CR-V by Mag-X. The link to that article is http://autoten.com/2010/03/05/2011-new-honda-cr-v-codename-2ws-rendering-and-specification/.

Today of course this new 4Gen CR-V has just been launched at the Los Angeles Motor Show in the U.S. for the U.S. The CR-V is one of Honda's 'global' model, so what we see in the U.S. is virtually identical except for minor details, to elsewhere in the world. 

And so a thought occurred to me. This would be a good opportunity to compare the accuracy of scoop renderings by scoops specialist publications like Autoten and Mag-X. We have the rendering of the new 4Gen CR-V from March. We now have photos of the actual 4Gen CR-V. So how near or how far apart are they ? 

Below on the right is the photo of the Mag-X magazine taken from the Autoten website. On the left is an official photo of the 4Gen CR-V from the AHM photo-pack. I chose the photo with a viewing angle as close to the Mag-X rendering as possible. 

Comparing the two, it can be seen that the grill of the rendering is off compared to the grill on the actual car. But the shape and profile of the headlights and the side windows are nearly spot on. In fact, the overall rendering is quite accurate when compared to the actual car. So considering that the rendering was probably made from verbal descriptions from 'insiders' to Mag-X, we can actually see that it is quite a good representation of the car.