[Unheard]

this is something i have thought about quite a bit, the engine placement is not that important really its more to do with engine design and placement of the radiator.

A flat 4 such as in a subaru or porsche allow for a lower profile to the car. subarus
with flat 4s upfront can achieve a very low bonnet line.

There is nothing at all to say that a front mounted engine has to have a radiator mounted at the front and have the hot aor swilling around the engine bay it is just just the way it has always been done. there are several other ways to look at it.

a standard setup air comes in at the front through the radiator, once through the radiator the air is expanded so it just has to exit where it can out of the engine bay. so to refine this you could have ducting incorporated into a bellypan that ducts the hot air under the car and exits at the rear of the car. At the same time the air could pass over the exhaust and cat to help cool it killing 2 birds with one stone

The other is to actualy have the radiator mounted at the back of the car. you have to remember that a radiator dose not have to take the form of what we have always known with little fins. It just has to have the correct surface area to cool enough so the radiator could actually be incorporated in to the whole rear end of the cars body pannels, or a rear wing fin anything the imagination can come up with obviously there
are issues to work our with the car at idle with no air flow but if you set yourself a harder challenge in the first place you come up with better answers to problems
a smaller pipe bore would be more logical if running pipe down the length of a car, .

Then there is another idea i had and one i have spent some time looking for infomation on thermal jets to work out the feasibility of my theoretical concept

Instead of having a radiator made up of fins it could be made from micro bore metal piping, so the air flows in at the front gets expanded in the pipes and the micro pipes then get channeled down the car to the rear end because you will have fine thermal jets theoretical the jets could be used to change the dynamic of the wake at the back. Eather acting as a thermal cushion for the colder air to ride on or by spiraling the jets to create a worm air vortex

The 911 constantly out preforms cars with equal power and its always put down to handling but its would seem obvious to me that the hot engine at the back actually has a big factor in this. After all an engine is expanding air to shift the pistons its just thermal expansion of air and water vapor. as an engine wastes most of the potential energy of the gas put into the car in heat-loss and noise it seems logical to put the waste heat to good use, i have more ideas on that but i will keep that for another topic

good weight distribution can be achieved with rear mid of front engines its just down to good design.

edit..

Just noticed 'Body integrated radiator method, requires no grill or openings...' looks to have some of the same ideas so i am going to go read it now