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Normally, outside of a car it shouldn't really matter which way a hard drive is mounted because the heads sit on a cusion of air as it is in use rather than anything based on gravity. They do get used to being in a certain orientation though due to the cumulative effect of gravity on certain parts so with old drives that have been in one orientation you can find they are only readable when positioned that way.
In a car all the strongest shocks are verticle as you go over bumps, turning is nothing in comparison, and you want to mount the drive vertically because the heads are freely floating above and below the disc and any shock will cause them to move in that axis, possibly into the platter. Not only will the mechanism holding the head in a certain position on the platter give much more resistance to the shock than the air cusion but as mentioned before if a shock is big enough it will only cause a read error.
Laptop drives are much more resiliant than standard drives. Because they are smaller and because they are specifically engineered to deal with a certain amount of shock while in use. Also they are better for power and heat reasons.
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