First, I've built the laydown and stand up three gear tranny and ran them back to back and worked on set ups for both. The laydown, if you have the traction, keeps the rear end flatter and let's you drive through the turns better. The stand up tranny does have more overall traction but it feels more like the pendulum effect you had when you compared the old rear motor to the first generation of mid motor cars. Even adding the brass c mount in the landown tranny felt better than the standup. So it's a tuning thing, not necessarily a fad. Yes you can just add weight right in front of the aluminum mount to achieve nearly the same effect. I like the brass mount for having the weight in a consistent location. It's splitting hairs but it makes me feel better when testing that I can duplicate setups more consistently