So we all know manual trans vehicles are dying due to market share and would require additional crash testing and emissions testing to be done to make them legal to sell.

but thinking about how the chicken tax is skirted by Ford selling the Transit Connect thats 100% made in Turkey, rear seats and interior trim added to be sold here as a passenger vehicle for import, then immediately the rear seats are stripped and panels removed to be sent back to turkey to be reinstalled so it is then sold here as a commercial delivery van. Or how Mercedes imports all the pieces of the Sprinter van from overseas as a kit that is then assembled here in the US to be sold as a commercial van - what if we applied some similar logic in the form of a dealer installed manual trans kit for people who really want a manual trans?

like the auto maker punches the holes or whatnot for the clutch pedal but not one leaves the factory with a manual trans. The trans, pedals, master/slave, flywheel, etc is then available to be bought and installed by dealers to be able to sell lets say a manual trans fullsize truck. Would this skirt crash testing and emissions? Dealers can install all sorts of brush guards and running boards and whatnot that im theory would change crash behavior. Having the manual trans as a stand alone kit wouldnt slow down assembly line production much at all nor are dealers stuck with them on their lots so the auto maker still wins.