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The design as far as how its welded/supported is identical. So even if improvements were made, unless they are just that much better welds, this can happen again, easily. The design of this particular one is just weak.
The factory suspension loads exactly nothing in the way that it's loaded in the Gerst/QA1 k-member as well as any of the other ones.
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Other than the steering box, the stock part pushes all the load directly into the main member, basically on the same axis with small moments at worst. If you fully welded one of these out, and braced the steering box mount, I honestly don't think you can really break one of these. Everything is a 3D shape and also naturally arched or triangulated. It's naturally quite stiff. The steering box mount honestly isn't though.
Of course my 55 year old one has been taking P275 tires for 10 years (it may only have been 12-14k miles in that time) and it had a lot of miles and questionable weld quality to begin with. For something designed to be mass produced and to a price it's a solid piece. The engineering of it is fundamentally solid, especially for when it was made.
