What happened to the weight distribution slider? I understand that it was not the most realistic, but I am sure automakers have at lease some say in the weight distribution of their products. Will it be brought back at some point?
Same! I want all my cars to have perfect 50/50 just like nearly every BMW ever made! Even if it costs me man hours and material cosy to do it.
Hmmm, that may have come across a bit forceful. Read it in a happy voice and you’ll get the spirit of it. =)
Maybe it’d be a good idea to have a ballast option that can then be tuned for weight distribution.
Maybe but there’s plenty of options for adjusting weight distribution that don’t require heavy ballast. Like putting the battery in the boot, adjusting the location of the spare and even pushing the engine further back against the firewall.
True, but for simplicity’s sake in the menus, a ballast slider and weight distro slider should be more economical on GUI, and also have quite a lot more power in fine tuning a car for a variety of reasons (ie, race car min. weight of 900kg, car weighs 893kg, just add 7 kg and you have that weight to mess around with to get a better weight distribution as well).
I wasn’t suggesting having a bunch of options. I was more saying that the weight distribution slider doesn’t necessarily need to effect weight.
Perhaps something like in the middle of the slider is the basic value that the game generates. Half way up and half way down shift it up to say 5% forward or back but at no weight penalty (still have a cost involved for tycoon mode). Anything beyond that costs a little extra weight because you need to put in dead weight to achieve it.
As for ballast for the purposes of increasing weight for no other reason than to increase weight. I’m a bit dubious on its worth. Is there any use for it outside of racing? Remember this isn’t a racing car building game.
Additional weight has the effect of increasing the safety rating of a car in the game, so there’s that. It really does assist in changing a car’s handling though, so it’s useful in making the car more stable (or less stable!). Also, having a higher weight on drive tires give better grip to them at low speed. Technically they do at high speed as well, but that’s extra inertia to overcome (and thus, understeer).
It won’t come back because IRL it is not a thing for anything but the most extreme production cars. You can’t just magically change the weight distribution. It simply is a consequence of your good or poor design choices. Want a lightweight car, with a big engine on top the front axle? Guess what, that will suck. If you want to get away with this you’ll have to use mid-engine layouts, which have other disadvantages though. In automotive design (like in everything else) you can’t have the cake and eat it too. 
Actually, I beg to differ. Let me inform you of the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray from GM. They use a pretty large 6.2L V8 in the front, but it’s got a near perfect 50/50 weight balance thanks to a rear mounted transmission. Just because you throw a 7.0L engine into the front, doesn’t automatically void the ability to achieve near a 50/50 weight balance, but you are right, it isn’t a big enough deal to bring the feature back and have to deal with more bugs.
I beg to differ too 
Let me inform you that such thing is the exception, and not the rule. Of course it is possible, but its just not a thing big enough to consider. Think of it that way: whenever you want to add something to the game, tell me what other thing you want to replace with it. Sadly, that’s the way development has to be tackled if you want something playable at the end.
I knew you would, and I also felt that was the response I’d get. I don’t want to make your jobs any harder than you guys have it, and honestly, I don’t need a weight distribution slider, if I want 50/50, I will design something that has 50/50. 
Wow, that’s a lot of commas… 
I would say the corvette’s balance would be down to good design choices on GM’s part, rather than a magic slider.
Does raise another question, rear mounted transmission, is this likely be offered in the game?
There have been a number of other cars having this, like the Alfa 75