It was getting close to inspection time when my muffler decided to disintegrate. No surprise there. I found an el-cheapo universal "red" one, u know what I'm talking about, for 21 bux shipped. Got me thru inspection. Now my truck has that sound, like I'm driving in a foriegn film. OK, i don't watch foriegn films regularly, but all the vehicles sound the same.

I recently crashed, details far too involved and embarrasing, into hidden remains of a guard rail. Just the post, angled in an impalement fashion that would have made Vladimir envious.
The force was enough to stop the vehicle from about 18mph. I did not know what I hit until after I got out and looked.
The great impaler had skewered my left foglight fascia, smashed through the lense, displaced the lamp, and rammed itself into the fog light bracket.
Whew, i thought to myself, nothing major. Took a lot of serious rocking to get the truck loose, though.
After a proper inspection with light, I realised that the factory fog-lights on my 96 employ the use of some serious mounts. Ones strong enough to stop my truck. Brackets, that could probably be used as jack points. These items are fastened to what seems to be the bumper mounts. The accident bent the bumper mount, and the bolts that hold the lamp mount, but not the lamp mount/bracket itself.
It is a heavy, cast-metal piece. It was an unexpected surprise in this world of non-stop corner-cutting assembly and manufacturing practices.
My guess is... it was a mistake. The prototypes were probably supposed to go the plastics department but wound up in the foundry department, where important structural items are cast. No other logical explanation for these industrial-strength, bulldozer-grade items on an "economy" truck from Detroit. In strength, it matches nothing else at all on the vehicle. If the rest of the truck was built like this, you could probably stop a tank.
And - oh yeah, the dangling broken lamp still works!