Wow... Uuh... Wow. There's a lot of misinformation in this thread:
A cat back is not illegal, federally. Your state/county laws may dictate that your exhaust is too loud, however.
Putting one pipe off to one side of a dual exit header for an open exhaust back, while leaving the other exhaust on would be extremely pointless, and very un-functional. It would cause more issues than it solved.
The number of exhaust outlets in no way determines how many cylinders/what displacement a car runs.
Having a high flowing dual exhaust with twin properly sized runners, and a properly sized cross pipe, and/or Y-pipe will NOT reduce exhaust velocity, and two mufflers or one cross-flow muffler will not be any more resistant to velocity than any other equally baffled muffler.
The above, however, will be heavier, which lends itself to worse performance. However, if the above exhaust were done only for the reason of efficiency, then you would have NO cars that had a dual exhaust. Why? Most cars have a cross pipe or a Y pipe, as it allows for resonating exhaust pulses to create a more substantial scavenging effect further down the exhaust, and this is on six, eight, twelve cylinder cars. Furthermore, turbocharged cars would, or SHOULD, by the above beleif, never have a dual exhaust. Since a turbocharger collects all the exhaust gasses in one place, and pushes them out from yet another single source. So, insofar as dual exhausts are 'ricey', they should be considered ricey on ANY car.
Velocity is NOT the same thing as backpressure. Backpressure is, essentially, bad by definition. Port velocity, which can be lost by a) Having too large of an exhaust, b) having ports that are too large on a ported out head, c) having an intake system of such a diameter that you're gaining no velocity from having a tract (exception: velocity stacks just want air, and work on the Venturi Effect.)
And please, please, please, people... 'The point is mute' is not only not the proper saying, it makes little sense... The word is 'moot', which means to bring up a topic for a discussion or debate, for SPECIFICALLY that purpose, and heretofore, one means by saying; 'The point is moot,' you are trying to convey the fact that it's pointless arguing a point that was specifically brought up for the point of argument.
Whew. Sorry about the rambling. =)