Yeah, when the law allows additional sanction for willful/knowing violation, courts will not only often see through your “clever hack”, but also see it as evidence of deliberate wrongdoing.

Also see: structuring.

You have to report behavior X, and if you deliberately don't do behavior X to avoid reporting it, that's a crime too!

Let's see you put that on the blockchain...

See also: the $10k reporting threshold for banks. Deliberately doing smaller transfers to avoid the reporting threshold can be illegal (depending on intent), and the banks are legally mandated to report suspicious activity (such as that) as well.

That is what I meant.

Aren't the seats themselves already a "hack"?

Yes. Seems like Subaru got lucky and Ford didn't.

Subaru left them in and let the customer do whatever. Ford removed them.

But the "hack" is that they were never intended to be practical even if left in.