Who knows maybe he's getting a really good deal on the car and if done properly no one would ever know it was converted. And like you said the resale is already low on a hybrid so once you've swapped the motor who gives a damn what you do to it after that.

The only thing that gives my car away as being a conversion is the issue with the clutch pedal. If I wanted to though, all I would have to do is take the black/white and black/red wires from the autos gear selector and run it to the clutch pedal switch and voila you would have to depress the clutch to start the car.

I bought my car as an automatic because it was the ideal situation. A buddy had the car as an automatic and blew up the motor. He wanted to get rid of it because he did not have the skills to fix himself or the bucks to pay a shop to fix it for him. So instead I picked up the car insanely cheap and started to plot the conversion and motor swap. BTW I purchased and built my car from the ground up for $5k. So if the price is right buy it and convert it and call it a day.

The auto to manual conversion only tacked on an extra $75 to my swap and like I said was done with hardly breaking a sweat. People convert auto's to manuals all the time. All cars are universal of the production line. A cars fate as either an auto or manual is all decide by what the production facility decides to bolt into it. So if done properly, you would never know the conversion took place.

And that my friend is the "why the hell" answer to your question.