Last night I posted some CGI images of the 2010 Saab 9-5 sedan and the wagon that will follow after it.
Shortly thereafter I took some heat, made amends (kinda), patched up some relationships……… and then my router/modem completely died. It’s 16 or so hours later and after 2 hours on hold and two trips to the computer store for new cables and a new modem I’m back online, having missed all that happened in between.
That forced break has given me plenty of time to think. So here’s why what happened, happened.
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Posting those images was no small decision. I knew that Saab wouldn’t have wanted them out there this early and that I’d be risking my relationship with them by putting them up here. I thought about it for a fair while before doing so, and you know the result.
I posted the images because this is an independent Saab enthusiast’s website and more than anything else, a glimpse at the real 2010 Saab 9-5 is what almost every Saab enthusiast wanted to see.
The tipping factor for me was that these images were CGIs, which from experience I know are OK for getting the basics about a car without giving away the details that a full-res proper photo would give. If I’d received full-res photos, there’s no way I would have published them.
In order to further limit the impression given, I also reduced the size of the images and the resolution. Small mercies, but still…
After being online for about an hour, Saab requested that I remove them, which I did. We had some discussions via email and phone in the hours following. It seems that the time they were up was long enough for them to be copied and posted elsewhere so the removal from this site is now unfortunately of little consequence. Hence, I’ve re-posted them in the original article.
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At the end of the day, I’m a blogger and this is what I do. It’s one of the prime purposes of this website – to share and celebrate the good things about Saab. For them, it’s a double-edged sword because the community around here (and elsewhere) is, over all, most definitely a good thing, but sometimes it can cut the other way.
I love the cars and I love the company and on balance, I believed that these low-res CGI’s would give Saab’s community something to smile about – without giving them the full picture – at what is still a time of some uncertainty.
I think the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the images means that we’ve all got a lot more faith and hope for Saab’s future as a car company.
And remember – the real photos and the real car will be around 10 times better than these.
Now there’s something to smile about!
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