Same car.
Come straight up from the front tire, center, to top of hoodline, then back for a short distance, maybe 6 inches.
You see the beginning of a triangular dent that starts there. This is a reaction to the explosive force driving the dashboard/firewall forward and crumpling the front fender as it did so. Visible in both images once you know where to look.
Numerous other points of agreement too.
The apparant “different car” problem stems mostly from the angle and flash. In the side on image, the flash reflects back off the plastic wheel well skirt, making it appear to be a metal flange, though if you look close at high magnification, you can see the texture and color are different than the bodywork above.
In the image from 10 o’clock, with the red car in the lower left corner, the wheel well skirt is angled off of the flash and comes through very dark, almost difficult to see. The key tg component recognition there is the pair of specular highlights immediately above the wheel. The most visible is the orange one on the actual bodywork, which is almost certainly a reflection of a mercury vapor street light.
Below and just to the rear of it is a smaller and much less intense reflection off the plastic wheel skirt, defining its location. Once you find it, it’s easy to see it, and then realize that the VW-like appearance of the other image is a product of that fender flare being highlighted from the flash.
I can’t rule out a headrest bomb, but I’d stake twenty years of structural analysis on a massive charge in the trunk or under the rear seat. Whoever was in the front seat got folded over and...creased. Looks like the front seat headrest has disappeared. Back seat occupamt turned largely to mist, or an even finer particulate.
If a headrest explosive detonated, enough to mange the back end of the vehicle that way, it would drive the side greenhouse struts downward, bending the unit body dead center, which you just don’t see here. Instead, everything seems to have been displaced outward from one point, consistent with blast velocities originating in or near the trunk or behind/below the rear seat.
“Instead, everything seems to have been displaced outward from one point, consistent with blast velocities originating in or near the trunk or behind/below the rear seat.”
Yeah. EXCEPT for that big hole in the front fender, which is only in one of the pictures.
(I can’t believe so many miss what is right in front of their face)