Underbody Shield problems of the 1996 GEO Metro

My daughter was turning into a private driveway. Lost steering and car came to immediate stop. The right front frame had rusted through and dropped car onto the assembly for the right front tire causing it to break and allowing the tire to turn outwards and stop the car. There is no repair to this, the car will be junked. If she had been on the highway this probably would have been a very serious accident. This really surprised us as the car had only a small amount of rust on the surfaces that we could see. When the garage had the car up on the rack to show me the problem I could see quite a bit of rusting on all the front components, but none on the rear. I am the original owner of the car, we have taken reasonably good care of it.