You can make a Mobius easy with a strip of paper, if you twist it where it joins.. If the track was something the car could run on both sides of (the top side and the bottom side) then it could still traverse the track as long as gravity was ignored, but it would end up running both sides of the track in its double-loop.
But how this applies to the "Arch of Time" is still vague.
The Mobius Theory has often been a model for time:
www.cix.co.uk/~antcom/mtl.html Describes this one way.
But it goes into all that hard-to-comprehend Stephen Hawking-type stuff.
I've read a bunch of it, but still can't pretend to comprehend it.
I know it definitely relates to the race-track and the Arch in this story, but the
car is baffling.
The artistic depictions I've seen of beings traveling on the Mobius of time are usually symbolic of linear travel. Escher drew ants crawling, but the classic analogy used by Einstein and folks of the 'theoretical physicist" ilk has always been one of
trains travelling on a track
So the car could possibly be the 'train' used in these physics analogies, I'm sure there is plenty of writing on the perspective of the traveler, versus the perspective of the outsider. Relativity and all that, says that the true motion of the object can never be defined unless it is in respect to a fixed perspective, and even the fixed perspective is only relative to itself.
It's a big confusing mess, but I'm sure the car is going to be
very important.
(ps. go back and read the beginning again. In my view, it was the best part of the book!)
edit-- couple more details. When Roger invades the house, he smashes the tinker-toy castle, but leaves the race-track "Arch of Time" undisturbed in Jeremiah's room. Foul can easily destroy the 'castles' Jeremiah built as a ward to his "domain," but is power does not yet enable him to harm the Arch, paralelling his perdicament in the land.
Also the cars are laying in chaos on the floor while Jeremiah is building the Arch, and then it's complete,
Linden puts the choas into order, arranging them "like a display on top of his bureau." This is (could be) analogous to her wielding the Staff of Law in the Land.
If so, only
from her imposed 'Law' on the cars, he was able to snatch one of them as he is abducted.
The text says:
On some level, he must have understood his danger.
But his original 'chaotic' placement of the cars, 'in a clutter on the floor' would not have enabled him to 'reach out' and grab one as he was captured..
Only the application of Linden's 'Law" had put the car in a place where it could be gotten when Jeremiah needed it.
In some way, Law knows the future. It knew that the cars would be there when the time came. And Jeremiah snatched one.
My 'guess' at this point is that this is why Jeremiah is with Covenant. Covenant might 'be' the "vehicle" which was placed just where it would be needed by (the Staff of) Law, specifically to be there when Jeremiah (creator?) 'reached out."[/i]
