me neither, could the Navi (maybe with some tweaks), a Aviator version before a decision to change it? I don't know
I see a bit resemblance with the Corsair grille
but then again you might be right with your analysis
Ford basically was copying GM and reinvented the wheel with CD6 at great expense and that’s why anything beyond Explorer/Navigator was harder to justify… although the CD6 Edge/Aviator replacement made it all the way to prototypes seen driving with camouflage stripes.
Had Mulally embraced the global RWD idea with the Aussie Falcon/Territory thrown into the pot, the economics may have sufficient to justify a full product cycle but in 2008, he was more interested in saving money and making full use of the vehicles that Ford already had in North America.
I think time was up for RWD cars as their volume began to waste away in the twenty teens, even FWD/AWD cars eventually gave way to utilities and Ford just saw it as too easy to follow that path with existing FWDs and just evolve Mustang as required.
Forgive my crude lines, I'm just using a snip tool with the mouse and it didn't go very pretty lol
A few things that may be throwing you off:
1) Rendering/touched up AND pixelated/zoomed image, with a darkened scene vs. real world where you'll see all the support structure of every item.
2) chrome trim painted black in real world model, making it hard to delineate the horizontal lines seen on the real world one.
3) angle of the photo in the Aviator pic can distort the image, making it seem taller.
4) the rendering is from a few years ago now, IIRC, so it's possible there have been tweaks
5) the rendering seems to have a tighter mesh than the real thing, which will throw off the visual proportions.
Otherwise, all the other lines look close enough to chalk it up to image distortion for me.