With a new powerplant and maintaining rear wheel drive why not an inline CVT Vs. customary inline auto-box?
Personally I like the set up they have now. To go to Front wheel drive would end up being a whole new vehicle. They could introduce a second line of SS's.
Do I hear logistics nightmare?
If you got one of the original Club Slingshot magazines, they actually talked about they originally planned on it being a front wheel drive vehicle. They even built one for testing. The driving dynamics of it were just too terrible though so they had to switch to the rear drive.
Considering this 2.4L GM Ecotec is also in other vehicles with automatics, it shouldn't be that hard to change over. But again, from what I'm told, it does put it over that magic weight limit as-is so they would have to do some other redesigning. But someone could do it themselves pretty easily after purchase.