I'm not going to put my life on this but I think the following is the answer.......
Whether the rod with hit the pump lobe is dependent upon the stroke of the crank, early 1592 and 1756 had 79.2mm and the 1995 had 90mm which meant there was interference in all these sizes. The 1297, 1301, 1366, 1438 and later 1585 have a 71.5mm stroke which is short enough not to cause an issue. As the chocolate lime is a second series it will have a 1585 motor (even if the V5 states 1592) so the position of the pulley doesn't matter. My guess would be that it has at some time had a lucky escape when a belt change was done, if it had been a 2 litre the block would have received a nice hole. Presumably at subsequent belt changes the mechanics copied the existing pulley position so it carried on.......... That's my guess but I'm not 100% if that is right or not.
From what I can gather the exact timing to the nearest micron of this pulley is not super critical, on cars where it interferes it is essential that the lobe is up rather than down when the piston is at or near the top of its travel, again my supposition I'd need to study this on an actual block to be absolutely right