How creative can you be and stay realistic?

[Gunfixr]

Spanish Windlass.
Oh, ok.

Funny thing is, that truck I had was custom built by me. It was a Ford 3/4 ton with the International 6.9L diesel engine. Anyway, I had swapped out the axles for a set from an old military truck, a 1 1/4 ton ammo carrier. It was kind of an extra large pickup truck.
On that truck, like many from that period, the wheel had back set rims, as the axles were actually longer than the truck was wide. Therefore, the hub stuck entirely out from the wheel. It had this strange attachment bolted to the axle flange on the end, which for a long time I couldn't figure out what it was for.
It was a built in winch.
The attached piece had a good sized hole through it. You slid a bar through, looped a rope end over it and wound it say once around the wheel hub, and tied the other end to something fixed, like a tree. Then, you just put the truck in gear, and the rotating wheel and hub wound the line around the hub, pulling you out. The hub was even cut to a taper contour, to keep the line closer to the wheel.
All four wheels were set up like this.

I left the rear ones on, since they looked cool, but had swapped the front ones for lockable hubs, as originally the truck was full time 4wd. Couldn't use them, I had regular center set wheels. A rope would've been cut, dragging under such pressure around the outer rim edge. A steel cable would've torn up the rim. Either would've ripped out the air valve on the first turn.

Now that I finished I remember. The axles came from a Kaiser Jeep M715