Category Links Landing Page within Manufacturers

Hey yall, first post ever after long time lurking on this invaluable forum.

On my home page, I'm using the 'Manufacturers List Sidebox' Addon, which changes the manufacturers select sidebox to a list of links instead of the drop-down menu that appears by default.

My question: When users click one of these manufacturer links, can I create a landing page with links to categories within that Manufacturer? As is, users see a list of all items within that manufacturer, which is confusing. I want them to click the Manufacturer link on the home page, then land on a page that shows links to all the categories within that manufacturer, then click one of those categories, and only then see a list of items within that Manufacturer/category.

There is already a drop-down menu to filter by category on Manufacturer pages... this is sort of the type of thing I want, but links instead of a drop down menu, and no products till you click one of the categories.

My site: http://dieseldp.com/

Ultimately, I am trying to figure out if this would be simple enough to try to do, or if I should just create a custom menu and pages to accomplish this rather than trying to automate it.

Using Zen Cart v1.5.1.

I'm wondering if I could on the Manufacturer pages change the "Filter results by:" dropdown menu (near the top) to a list of links instead of a dropdown menu. Then I could hide product listings altogether on the manufacturer page... and voila, potentially.

Logically this seems like it would work but I'm not sure how to do it yet, or if it's possible/practical. Anybody have any advice on this?

i have looked into displaying the filter drop-down as a list of links and can't seem to find any way that doesn't require coding far beyond my capabilities.

thinking the best way to accomplish what i'm going for is just to make a custom sidebox with links like "Manufacturer 1", "Manufacturer 2", etc. Then have these links lead to custom pages with manually written menus to "Category 1", "Category 2", etc., that lead to the product listings by category. Will be a lot of manual coding now and down the road when we add new manufacturers, categories, and products, which is a bummer, but won't be the hardest thing to update. Still interested if anyone else has any ideas on what i was trying to do originally.