Larry Jaques writes:

On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:47:37 -0700, the infamous Jim Stewart
scrawled the following:

Most cars have two independent systems,
right front/left rear and left front/right rear.

Are you nuts, Jim? That would put a car in a spin in seconds flat if
one reservoir were dry. I believe that all the cars I ever worked on
up through the 90s had separate circuits for front and rear. I see no
reason they'd change that. It's a real safety issue.

If you know of crossed systems, please post a link. I gotta see this.

googling for diagonal split brake turns up enough hits describing it
as the other alternative to front-rear split (see
http://books.google.com/books?id=U4T...m=12&ct=result)
that *somebody* must have done it. My never-reliable memory is that
Volvo has used it; googling for "volvo diagonal split brakes" turns up
lots of allusions to this (see
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/james.sumner/740.html) and to their
triangular split brake system, but nothing that's really as concrete
as I'd like.