did you guys read the $20K showdown in Excellence?

[Ronzi]

When confronted with a clean sheet of paper for a performance/racing car, Porsche, along with just about every other manufacturer, invariably chooses the mid-engine configuration. Porsche has clung to the rear-engine configuration in their 911 GT racing cars for marketing reasons, not technical or engineering reasons.
In terms of pure transportation device packaging, the two configurations that make the most sense are front engine/front wheel drive, and rear engine/rear wheel drive. Once the technology for both steering and power delivery was available, front/front has dominated the market, principally because it packages all of the mechanical operations, including cooling, into one end of the car. leaving the rest for cargo. Rear/rear does the same thing, as long as you have an air cooled engine that doesn't require radiators to be mounted 10 feet from the motor and all of the consequent plumbing.
The mid-engine configuration is a compromise heavily weighted in the direction of pure performance. One of the factors that Porsche struggled with in designing the Boxster was how and where to place big enough radiators to cool the engine adequately.