Well, having played with almost every possible way to modify the exhaust on the eagles cheaply, I'll put my .02 cents in.
The cat converter is actually beside the tranny/T-case on the passenger side. not farther back. the stock muffler position is on the driver side parallel to the yoke on the diff(approximately).
To mention some of my mods and what I liked most;
First thing I did on all my exhaust mods was to take a bar and basically gut the cat. making it a wide pipe essentially. it also keeps it somewhat legal cause unless the policemen cut it open, you have a "muffler"
-the first mod I did was, with the cat in place, remove the muffler and add a strait pipe. basically stock exhaust track except with no muffler. this gave me more power, but I didn't like the sound, it sounded cheap and "rappy"
-Second, was a side exit deal that exited on the passenger side. that sounded awesome, gave me good power, and looked good. I kept that till I smacked the car up.
-third, dual exhaust. the exhaust the SX/4 was horribly rusted and bashed up, so, I cut it approximately were the bracket should a been that held the cat, and built dual exhaust after the existing cat just the way it was(didn't bash it out) the final product is by far my favorite.
Here are some pics and movie of my dual exhaust set up.