Hi James,
Of course, on our dream engine the ports can be wherever we wish to put them. Problem with putting them front and back means the engine length would now be very long, or the exhausts or inlet on the forward cylinders would protrude into the drivers area. Whatever, this is fun. Maybe we can develop a system where the exhausts feed back into the intakes and we recharge the spent gas with oxygen fed from the restrictor =] (Dick, I really shouldn't take your advice to try ALL those beers)
Renault adopted a wide angle V engine in F1 for the very reasons we discussed here. Lower the CoG whilst making room for the exhausts under the engine. The reason they have abandoned it is because of the destructive harmonics at the very high RPM used in F1 (over 18,000rpm)
Oh BTW Dick, an American beer from Oregon just won the 'Best beer in the world' competition in Australia this week. Many antipodean brewers with their noses out of joint
PDR