This reminds me of the case of the Amstrad CPC 472.

Amstrad exported the 64K CPC 464 to loads of countries, and it did quite well. But Spain wanted to promote home-grown micros, and in an act of protectionism, applied a special tax to any computer with 64K or less of RAM.

Amstrad MD Alan Sugar directed his engineers to solder a completely non-functional 8K RAM chip to the mainboard, changed the name of the Spanish version to the 472, and skipped the tax.