Most limousines are made like that. The practice is fine in theory but I guess the business is too shady for the vehicles to be fine in practice.
There's a whole Well There's Your Problem (an engineering disasters podcast) about exactly that. I think the conclusion is that it isn't fine in theory or practice...
Well, this was a while back (90's perhaps) and he was building these in upstate NY. I've no idea if it was legal the time - I was driving plenty of cheap crap cars back then (Ford Pinto, Ford Ltd II ex. cop car with single digit mpg, '78 TransAm), and relative to those this was pretty nice!