Lynx makes a single carb sidedraft manifold that is a "crossflow" design. Is this better than a standard sidedraft manifold i.e. cannon brand? More hp capability? can anyone shed some light on this style manifold?

You might be thinking of the dual-plane design? It has two cylinders together, the other two together, it looks like this:



Lynx D1200

I think they do this to get longer runners, for more low-speed power.

I had one of these when my car was a street car. The theory was it evened out runner lenght between the inside ports and outside ports giving the car a smoother idle and more low end torque. Intakes for 1 & 3 are paired and 2 & 4 are paired. did it work, I don't know I never had a standard style single sidedraft manifold to compare against.

It wasn't runner length that they were going for, it was designed so that each throat of the carb got a suck every second pulse.
In regular single sidedraught manifolds the separate throats got sucked twice, then waited two pulses while its brother next door got two sucks.
With this design it was .. one for me, one for you, one for me, ahh hell, you get the picture.