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Fue la patrulla cuyo parachoques embistió al autobús.

Fue la patrulla cuyo parachoques embistió al autobús.
It was the patrol car whose bumper rammed the bus.
From Lesson 476:Personal 'a' for inanimate objects (a)·Spanish (Latin America)

Breakdown of Fue la patrulla cuyo parachoques embistió al autobús.

ser
to be
al
to the
el autobús
bus
cuyo
whose
la patrulla
patrol car
embestir
to ram
el parachoques
bumper

Questions & Answers about Fue la patrulla cuyo parachoques embistió al autobús.

Why do we say al autobús instead of just el autobús if a bus is an inanimate object?
This is known as the "accusative a" for disambiguation. Normally, inanimate direct objects don't take the personal a. However, when a sentence has two inanimate nouns (here, parachoques and autobús) and it might be confusing which one is the subject and which is the object, Spanish uses a to clearly mark the direct object. Without it, embistió el autobús could easily be misunderstood as "the bus rammed (it)."
Since la patrulla is feminine, why does the sentence use cuyo instead of cuya?
The word cuyo (whose) functions like an adjective, meaning it must agree in gender and number with the noun that is owned, not the owner. Because parachoques (bumper) is masculine, we use cuyo, even though the owner (la patrulla) is feminine.
Parachoques ends in an 's'. Is it plural in this sentence?
No, it's singular here ("whose bumper"). Parachoques is a compound noun made by combining the verb parar (to stop) and the plural noun choques (crashes). Nouns formed this way are always masculine and use the exact same form for both singular and plural (el parachoques / los parachoques).
Why is there an 'i' in embistió? What is the infinitive?
The infinitive is embestir (to ram or charge). Just like pedir becomes pidió, embestir has a stem change where the e changes to an i in the third-person forms of the preterite tense (embistió, embistieron).

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