I think a lot of it depends on what you hit, where, which direction and of course the speed of impact...there is a certain amount of 'give' built in to things, being the energy gets dispersed somewhere and if it's too stout at the front, it's going to travel down the rest of the car (more so)...I've seen cars (unibody mostly) get into minor front or rear collisions and there is damage on the opposite end of the car. However, if you're simply attaching it to the existing cross beam, so to speak, may not be as much of an issue, and it would act more like a brush guard than a bull bar; the difference being that a brush guard typically has a weak mounting point and is made of thin tubing, so it either bends at the tube, or at the mounting point...to the contrary, a bull bar is usually mounted to the frame in a solid fashion and is made from thicker, stronger tubing, so that it acts more like an extension of the vehicles frame...this works fine if you have a boxed frame (body on that), but trying to do that on a unibody and especially a chinsy car (vs. a truck let's say), it just sounds like it's asking for trouble...