So, here's the story. I live in the rust belt (ie: we dump tons of salt all over the roads all the time here). Even though I don't want to, I'll have to drive the Monte this winter, as my intentions in purchasing it were for it to be a nice daily driver. I know the underside of the car has no rust on it what-so-ever right now, and it seems that the factory rustproofing is still good BUT this was also the case with my ex Malibu when I first got it, which only took two years to rust out underneath and suffer because of it. So, I'm a bit worried to say the least, but I've heard undercoating is a complete scam and is innefective, etc.

What do you guys think?

 

My car is going to go through it's 9th winter now, not much rust underneath it to be honest. Just try to wash the car once a week in the winter to get the salt off the best you can.

 

do you park in a garage?

 

Sounds good, just out of curiosity do you get a lot of salt where you live too?

We have a local carwash that does a underbody spray/wash for relatively cheap, so I might just use that if I go that route. I'm going to hope the Monte Carlo is higher quality than the Malibu because, well, I haven't seen one rusted out badly on the road yet. The Malibus though, are a dime a dozen.

 

I will be able to garage my car on occasion, but due to existing hierarchy in my household I only get one spot, and that's for the Firebird Formula- so most likely not that often. :/

 

i just wanted to give you a heads up becuase parking in a garage can actually speed up the rust becuase the snow and ice that has build up melts mixes with the salt and the repeated process is not

 

all that great give it more chance to seep into the metal.. but i am with mike on this one wash it weekly so it's not just sitting eating away at it

 

When I lived up in the Poconos (6 years of the car's life) there is a TON of salt on the roads. In Philly there isn't as much, but I keep the habits of cleaning the car once a week (also make sure to dry everything really well, and keep those wheel wells clean)

 

where i lived in va when i lived there there were alot of salt on the roads. i always made it a point to hose down and wash off what i could do underneath as well to prevent any thing from rusting.what i noticed on the malibu and some outher makes from outher manufactures are the wheel wells rust kind of horribly. i always pulled away the wheel skirts on the inside of the wheels to clean them as well. what i noticed is salt has a tendency to colect there if it is missed and never cleaned with care

 

I can't wait to dry my car outside of the garage in winter this is going to be great. I guess that's the price I pay for a rust-free car, though. Also about the rust forming around the wheel skirts, that's definitely true, it was.. pretty bad around there.

Thanks for the headsup about the garage, I always thought it would be the opposite but now that I think about it that makes a lot of sense.

So I'm just going to assume that undercoating is not a gimmick, just unnecessary at this point.