grayspeckledgoose wrote:
It's a 2010 Chevy Malibu, so there'd have to be a significant amount of damage, I would think. Unless, of course, the frame is damaged...

Most likely your car doesn't have a "frame" per se, it's more like it has a unibody type construction.

Cars back in the 1970's and before actually had full frames from front to back, just like most trucks and full size vans still do today. But in part to increase fuel economy, they started to change how cars were made and got rid of the full frame as well as making cars in lighter weight materials.

So being that your car likely doesn't have a full frame it really wouldn't take too much to screw up the chassis and thus the unibody.. A few times I have seen people driving down the road with obvious chassis damage where it looks like the car is twisted a little and driving sort of sideways at an angle.