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Even if the plan inside the footprint appears to be irrelevant, it is not. The car is modeled by a unicycle model, in particular non-holonomic kinematics including a limited turning radius. Changing the position to the front axle would result in a substantially different model w.r.t. the real kinematics.

For some basic information the car-like model, refer to LaValle's book. You might also check the teb_local_planner carlike tutorial.