Seriously… a car analogy. Wow. And a pretty bad one at that.
But I will help you fix that analogy for free, since I feel nice today. A crack for DRM isn’t like adding artwork to a car to make it worth more.
If anything this is about a car that has certain defects that make it work less well than it should. E.g. you cannot switch into gear 5. It runs slower than it could. So people go and fix that, for free. Now the automobile maker takes that free fix and sells all new cars with it. Is that ok? There, still a crap analogy but arguably better than yours.
You ask if the cracks are released with permission to freely distribute? Actually no, they are not. Because they are marked illegal by the law. They should not be distributed since thats against the law. But its of course convenient for the publisher to use that work and distribute themselves. They are technically breaking the law themselves since they are applying illegal cracks to their own software. So thats ok then?