Sorry to hijack your inquiry, jdog!
Nope, in 15 years I've never seen a Curl with any front mounting block, Dahon-style or Brompton-style.
The Curl D9 that's been
teased for a little short of 2 years now has disc brakes and a clean front end.
Seems like a Dahon-style front block would be a natural, but one hasn't appeared in the
teasing literature.
I've posted my front luggage carrying on my Curl several times, and I'm always told that attaching dunnage to the steering axis, like the Birdy and BikeFriday also do, ruins the handling and the rider will be lucky to keep the bike between the ditches.
Wonder why nobody ever suggests the Birdy or Iruka should be half the cost of a Brompton?
The
teased specifications list an 11-28T nine-speed cassette. For world touring, I suggest modifying with a Sturmey-Archer CS-RK3 hub:
That's exactly the gear range I would need as minimum. My current 20" 2X setup is 21-85 gear inches.
I'm not a big fan of the front block unless the load is very close to the bolts, I don't like a long cantilever on relatively short bolt span, unless light load. One reason Dahon may have stayed away from that, is fatigue issues at the screws may be more of an issue on an aluminum frame, though Dahon does it on their other aluminum bikes I think.
Steered load, added in front of or balanced over the steering axis, can actually improve bike handling with small wheels, a bit less agile, but a bit more stable (mass damping). It says so on paper and I've experience it in practice. Non-steered front load, using the head-tube screw block, might also help stability, there is a university paper about that:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...f-stable-bike/