(long detailed post, skip to last sentence for short version)

My car is an 86 744 with the ZF trans. I was stopped at a red light when I guy three cars back didn't stop quick enough and plowed into the car in front of him, which hit the one in front of it, which hit my car straight on the rear bumper. My car lurched forward a bit on impact, but I was the end of the chain. My transmission was in "D" and my foot was on the brake.

My car has no visible damage. At worst, all I can see is maybe an extra nick or two on the rear bumper from the license plate bolts of the car behind me, but really that's it! I checked underneath the rear of the car, no damage whatsoever visible.

The accident occurred on friday. Today I had to stop suddenly, and when the car stopped moving, I felt a huge jolt from beneath and a loud knocking noise, almost as if I had something big in the trunk that had rolled around (no, there wasn't anything in the trunk). I looked around to see if something had hit me, it was that loud. I tried duplicating the effect with relatively sudden stops on my way home, and once or twice I felt a lurch as the car came to rest, but nothing like the really sudden stop that had brought about the loud knock I had heard/felt. I have felt small lurches like this before on occasion.

Before I 'test' this any more, I'd like to know if my transmission or driveshaft could actually have been damaged by the accident? I have heard that this is possible-- my nother swears that a similar impact led to the premature (35k mile) failure of one of her transmissions in her 244. Admittedly, my transmission is old and probably not as nice as it was in 1986, but I keep it on schedule and its last flush (29k miles ago) was with synthetic fluid.

summary: can a transmission or driveshaft be damaged by a bumper-on-bumper impact?