Had one break on my car as well, as a result of poly bushings. My car was stock ride height at the time. The strut rod snapped just like in that pic after only about 2,000 miles (granted the car had around 270k total on it at the time). It broke after driving over a speed bump in a neighborhood, and became apparent when I went to brake for the next speed bump at 25 mph. The lower control arm bent back and allowed the wheel to tuck under the torque box, causing complete loss of control. The car basically tried to run over it's own front wheel. The sway bar link did nothing to hold it, it just bent the hell out of the bolt. Luckily this happened at only 25 mph, and not 10 minutes prior when the car was doing 75 mph down the interstate.. there's no doubt it would have been completely catastrophic if that were the case. I replaced both strut rods with used ones off a parts car and rubber bushings, that was in Aug, 2007. I lowered the car 1.5" in Dec, 2010. I've put around 50k miles on the car since I lowered it with no further issues, still running daily on the strut rods and rubber bushings I installed back in '07.
.. My local oreill'ys usually has everything i'm looking for. Might could check rock-auto. Sometimes they have better prices.
