No, I've Never Seen That Before

I'll have a terrible camera phone picture to update this with on Monday, but I was driving home from work last night and I saw something that I had never seen before. Here was someone driving a mid-90s Ford Escort. That's not the something. The something was that the bumper of the Escort was a 2X4 that was nailed on to the frame. Now that's something I've never seen before. Is that even legal?