The centre ball is still mounted the regular way, so the link balls are still at a normal height to line up.

There is a significant advantage with ride height. The outside of the chassis underneath the links is usually scraped up when we run on asphalt. This arrangement significantly reduces that problem.

Necessity is the mother of innovation here though. The car was originally designed as an inline car for one reason: the cheapest graphite sheet we could get wasn't wide enough for a latitudinal mounted battery. After some initial testing I decided that we had to mount the battery cross-ways to make it easier to drive in low grip conditions and for newer drivers (which was the market we wanted to aim for). This is the arrangement we came up with.

The ears as you called them at the front double as positioners for the battery, meaning the pack doesn't slide around like it does in some other cars. (Also it's much easier to tape the battery in without the shock in the way, and the chassis is narrower than the pack which keeps it in tighter.)

The car can still be converted to an inline configuration without needing any additional parts. Removing the ears front and back allows the side links to be mounted in a conventional way out of the same holes as the ears mount on. The side-springs sit on top of the rear of the links in this case.

If you want to see what lead us to this point, I've been blogging about it on my club's website: http://www.morcc.com.au/smf/index.php?topic=4255.0 There are additional pictures of the previous iterations of the car, some early engineering diagrams and some of our inspirations.

p.s. You know it's going to say "I like it!" -- Howard Cano (ROAR '93 IC8 National Champion) on the box now right?