a drill down filtered catalog menu

Ubercart 6.x-2.6
Taxonomy menu 6.x-2.9 (patched locally to allow for multiple parents)

We have taxonomy menu being used as the catalog interface. It works great as a drill down by product category, type and then manufacturer. Of course this methodology is done by placing the individual products under the correct area. In addition to this we would like to add a manufacturer (perhaps by new taxonomy vocabulary) and then have a selector away from the taxonomy catalog menu to provide some filtering of the catalog items. We would also like to have the catalog (taxonomy menu) show only those menu items that are provided by the selected manufacturer.

IOW after the purchasing customer selects one or more manufacturers in a list off to the side - the taxonomy menu would then show only those items related to the selected manufacturers. It would work as I would describe as a "matrix of products" selected by the taxonomy catalog menu and the taxonomy manufacturer filter menu."

Are there existing modules that provide this functionality. We are looking at the taxonomy filter and rather than blindly trying the module I thought I might ask if this is a way to accomplish this concept. It seems as though it would be a replacement for the main catalog not a filtering augmentation of it.

Your opinions and suggestions would be very helpful.

I also posted this at the ubercart site issue posted here