That doesn't look safe. That doesn't look safe at all.

I've had my VW for a very long time.  Hard to believe, but for a number of years it was my ONLY car.  Because of that, it got driven all year round, and soldiered on through many WI winters.  It is actually the best winter car I've ever had.  I NEVER got stuck with it, not once.  Even the Mighty Caprice™ gets stuck occasionally.  As a consequence of winter driving, it got pretty rusty(not to mention that it what already pretty rusty when I got it).  When I first put it in storage, the front suspension was "questionable."  I had previously roughly and sloppily welded some 1/4" plate steel under the frame head(the part of the floor pan that the whole front suspension bolts on to).  When I got it out this time, fixing the front suspension was at the very top of the priority list.  Driving it from the storage unit to my house, I was nervous that it might actually break.  Here's the area we're fixing.  It's easily accessable after the gas tank is removed.

The front axle is the large tube running across the bottom of the pic, the triangle piece is the frame head(the piece we'll be working on).  Since it's a unibody, the whole pan is made from stamped sheetmetal of varying thicknesses, including the frame head.  Doesn't look too bad, right?  Lets take a look at it from the bottom...

Now you understand my concern.
I didn't want to replace the whole frame head.  Because it's where the whole front suspension attaches, it's absolutely critical that it be aligned perfectly.  I didn't want to mess around with all that, so I decided to replace just the lower piece.  Conveniently, VWs are popular enough that almost everything is available as a reproduction.  I was going to make my own bottom plate, but it was actually cheaper to buy the actual correct part.  This particular part was stamped in Denmark too, and is a quality reproduction.  After cutting off what was left of the bottom plate, you can see just how little metal was actually holding up the front of the car.

Here's a view of what was left on the car with the really rusty bits removed.  Just that little bit of sheetmetal was holding up the whole front of the car.  

After grinding the rust back to good metal, I sprayed the areas to be welded with weld-thru primer.  Weld-thru primer is typically almost pure zinc.  It gets sprayed on before the metal is welded together.  It's meant to be welded over, giving you some rust protection between the panels, acting like galvanized metal.  After careful measuring, I welded the new panel into place, putting welds where ever I could.

From the bottom, it's easy to see where my welds are.  The new panel is about 1/8" thick, so I could crank the welder up and get full penitration on my welds.  As you can see, there wasn't all that much good metal left to weld to. 

There wasn't enough welded area along the bottom of the frame head for my comfort.  For the most part, the sides and top of the frame head, never having snow and water standing on them, were still perfectly good and thick metal.  To give the frame head more strength and help tie everything together, I made some more plates out of 1/8" steel.  Here are all the pieces I added, in the location they're placed on the car.

Finally we have everything welded together.  You can see I also added some vertical straps that go well up the firewall for added support.  Once again, everything is backed with weld-thru primer.  With all the reinforcement welded on, while not the prettiest, my front suspension is now stronger than it was when it was new.