Actually I should have said that the Gen 3 uses a completely different chassis design, not just suspension.
The Gen 2 uses torsion bar springs at the front and has a separate chassis. On the left hand side of the vehicle, the torsion bar spring has to fit in between the chassis rails and the propshaft running to the front axle. In turn the propshaft to the front axle has to fit beside the transmission, which is just about centrally mounted in order to align the rear propshaft with the center mounted rear differential. The result is that real estate is at quite a premium on the left hand side of the chassis. I suspect that this has forced the layout to adopt quite a wide spacing for the chassis rails in the vicinity of the front wheels. This limits the steering angle that can be achieved without the wheels touching. The wide chassis rail spacing is also readily adaptable to wide engines, such as large V-configuration motors.
Here is a nice picture that shows off the layout of the Gen 1 (very similar to Gen 2) quite nicely.
The Gen 3 uses coil-over-shock type struts and has unitary construction with suspension sub frames. The presence of suspension subframes instead of a separate chassis is not really that important, because the subframe looks very much like a little section of a conventional chassis attached to the unitary construction body. However, with no torsion bars to fit in, the front suspension subframe can now move quite a bit inboard, thus freeing up space behind the front wheel and allowing clearance for greater steering angles.
