I would have thought that the position of the exhaust is a good bet as to where the engine itself likely is. That, paired with the position of the hatches as you described (further back), would make me assume intuitively that the engine is at the front tbh
The thing at the side makes me wonder if it is a climate control unit.
I would have thought that climate unit exhaust intake would be fairly small, perhaps this area marked in orange. ?
Marked in yellow is the only area that looks like it could be some sort of air intake for engine, close to the alleged air exhaust on the side. That is IF the engine is in the front.
Now of course I undertand that placing the engine up front would be logical, and it would easily explain the crew hatches position - but where in the world is the engine intake then?
Here is the engine intake for the much lighter vehicle, the airborne ifv.
Those grills in front of turret, on the top hull, are much bigger than the small area marked yellow in the first image.
I find it confusing that the large ifv would not have just as large intake grills somewhere on the vehicle. But looking at images from all angles the only place I see for such large intake area is the rear left side of the vehicle, covered with the metallic plate from the top and with an adjacent large grill in the rear.
If only we had high resolution images of the vehicle from its left side.
