QA1 may have in-house engineering, but their LCA design was obtained when they bought out CAP. Having had a set of CAP LCA's in the past, the design didn't change. There are a couple small details that are different, but those differences are very minor. The weld quality from QA1 is MUCH better though (of course!). They were a good design before, but CAP's production sucked. Mostly their welding.
As for the strut rod attachment, the strut rods bear very little load. The QA1 strut rods are aluminum tubes, and their CAP predecessors were the same and have withstood 60k+ miles on my Challenger. Heck they even survived one of the welds on my old CAP LCA's breaking.
