19 years old and she can still pass an MOT first time with no advisories.

[rustic]

Originally Posted by melissachels

Good stuff, just shows the difference when the car has the advantage of a caring owner & get looked after properly

The caring idea came from my early days, when times were hard, and I soon learnt to look after things if you still wanted them to perform.
My first car was an old mini, and the boot floor fell out, my second car was a three year old Toyota Corolla 1200E and the wings had rotted through.
I thought if only I had had the car earlier...
We eventually bought a Mk III escort new, they had just come out, BUT that was a rogue, so we got shut and bought a new Austin Ambassador, and we kept that 13 years, and that was totally rust free, following lots of waxoyl BUT it was the build quality that let that down. I was fixing something every weekend, and chasing poor assembly, like sand in the clutch slave cylinder, clutch plate not bolted on securely, loose screws in the alternator, oil pump screws came loose and we lost oil pressure, wheel bearing seals broke down and the spring part dropped into the bearing, and ball joints by the handful.

When we bought the Maverick, all my experience went into prevention rather than cure.
Over the years of car ownership, I have looked where the same model has started to rust and made sure mine didn't. But this is not something that you can do on a new model though, that's why the Ambassador scored, as there were loads of earlier Princesses about to compare.

The Maverick hadn't been out long, so it was a bit of a risk, and the alternatives at the time were the Discovery, Frontera, and the Sport track, with it's galvanised body had it's advantages, but was very van like.

Certainly getting the car from new and waxoyling it on day one, was key to the caring.

Having said that, with modern protection, even a five year old car can be treated, once all the muck is removed.
It's never too late to preserve what you have, but if the rust has already established itself, like in the gap between the boot under floor metal work, there is not a great deal you can do about it.
This area is double skinned, with no drainage, so encourages rust.