Sorry, I just didn't understand what you ment by this. Can you please rephrase. I fail to see what the timing has to do with the rotation.
You are right that using gears and having the motor turn counter-clockwise (see, I write american english, since I'm not an englishman ) would easily lead to a construction where the motor axle is pointing to the right. However there have been numerous attempts to either replace the pinion/spur combination with a belt drive and have the motor pointing to the left or just utilize a clockwise rotating motor setup with the axle pointing left. Neither of these approaches ever worked really well since it makes the car push badly while accelerating.