I completely agree, again, it goes into maintenance of the car (was the salt washed off the body periodically through summer, where was the car stored). Age/Mileage of the car does NOT negate looking it over.

I just spoke generically (as all you normally can tell by an ad is age/mileage, you have to look at the car and crawl under it to tell more stories). My '04 Monte with 62K on it and never driven in winter since 2008, looks almost MINT underneath, I love it (never had a car that clean underneath). My daily, the '94 Grand Am, she does not look anything CLOSE to what she did in 2003 when I bought her. Rust is consuming her slowly (though the brake/fuel lines are surprisingly good, I've had to replace just the back sections and the rest look awesome).

BTW - 2 years ago, the filler neck on the wife's 2001 Mustang rotted (thanks Ford for wrapping it with wire loom). Replacement neck is $150 ! I removed/disposed of the loom. I lightly wire brushed (by hand, no power tools) the neck. Saw pin hole leaks. Applied the rust inhibitor POR15, then two layers of JB Weld and a final layer of POR15. The check engine code for the pressure issue went away on it's own, passes emissions check again and a LOT cheaper then $150 (and I had the stuff in the garage already).

 

Shameless bump
Just curious if you guys had any more thoughts on some of the questions I had on the first page.