Why do people drive these in the salt or show me your rust / winter beater.

What happened to all the really rusty winter beaters?  I'll show you mine if you show me yours.  I usually get a kick out of the fender flapping buckets in the winter, where are they?

Also this week I saw in Audi R8, new 911 and an Alfa 4C driving around covered in salt.  I under stand that some people have the money to drive what they want but seriously get a Land Rover or something.

On a side note I applaud the wealthy in my area for spending on automotive passions.  It just hurts to know what the salt and chemical brine will do to these machines while my lowly Mustang takes a winter nap six feet off the ground.

In reply to akylekoz :

To be fair to the 911 guy, modern Porsches seem to be pretty darn rust resistant compared to most other stuff out there. 

Saw a Lambo over here in East Lansing a while back in the salty snow mush. Seeing it like that gave me mixed feelings like it does to you!

Im waiting to see a rusted out Tesla someday- or are they all plastic?

akylekoz said:

Also this week I saw in Audi R8, new 911 and an Alfa 4C driving around covered in salt.  I under stand that some people have the money to drive what they want but seriously get a Land Rover or something.

Check out "briansquestionabledecisions" on Instagram

Ok to be fair I once drove my rust free RX7 asa winter beater to save my CJ.  Mostly because the Mazda was amazing in the snow and the Jeep sucked on its bias ply wave tracks.

Honestly my second thought after how salt would kill the Porsche was, I bet that handles great in the snow.

In reply to therieldeal :

That guy is my hero.

There is some logic with the Alfa 4C in that the body won't rust and start flapping.

P3PPY said:

Saw a Lambo over here in East Lansing a while back in the salty snow mush. Seeing it like that gave me mixed feelings like it does to you!

Im waiting to see a rusted out Tesla someday- or are they all plastic?

Tesla Model S and X are aluminum bodied, while the 3 and Y are a bit of both, mostly steel. 

I remember hearing some complaints about the 3 with thin paint and a potentially substandard corrosion warranty - not sure if that was just hype or reality. Here's their corrosion warranty verbiage. 12 years is good, but the carve-outs could be problematic depending on how picky Tesla wants to be. 

In reply to j_tso :

Right, but aren't there about 1500 of these in the country?

All of the cringe cars I see on the road are owned by the type that will just drive it for a year or two until the next new thing comes out, so no big deal.   I'm of the mind set and financial situation that if I get a P car or other I'll drive it but take car of it for the next owner.  

Even if bodies don't rust, have you ever seen what it does to fasteners and bushings that bolts will never come out of.  Looking at you Subaru.  

When buying an all season car that comes with an extra set of wheels and snow tires, Great.  When looking at a future classic sports car the the same extras, Run, Run fast.   Imagine you are from the south and read that when looking to buy a used Lambo.

I used to work with a guy that had a mid 70s Ford truck.  It was rusted around the bed sides. When I say around what I mean is at about 45mph both bed sides would flip up like a set of wings,  hinged at the top,  completely horizontal.  It was something to see. 

akylekoz said:

Even if bodies don't rust, have you ever seen what it does to fasteners and bushings that bolts will never come out of.  Looking at you Subaru.  

That was the biggest shock I received the first time I worked on a winter-driven German car.  It wasn't the usual game of fighting rusty bolts, etc.  The protective coatings on the hardware were good enough that most things came apart like they were put together yesterday, despite being bathed in copious amounts of salt. 

Ian's post is my favorite of the whole day, will be hard to top that in any thread on here today. 

rslifkin said:

akylekoz said:

Even if bodies don't rust, have you ever seen what it does to fasteners and bushings that bolts will never come out of.  Looking at you Subaru.  

That was the biggest shock I received the first time I worked on a winter-driven German car.  It wasn't the usual game of fighting rusty bolts, etc.  The protective coatings on the hardware were good enough that most things came apart like they were put together yesterday, despite being bathed in copious amounts of salt. 

My cayman has 75k miles on it and spent its first three winters in Massachusetts. I've accidentally gotten it salty a few times since. The only obvious signs are that the exhaust is a bit rustier than it could be, and there's a couple spots of surface rust on the shocks. When you use good materials and good coatings on things, the effect is almost nothing. The problem is doing that costs money.

No photos, but I saw a Ferrari FF with a roof rack in the muddy parking lot of a ski area a few years ago.

In reply to rslifkin :

Same here.  Our 06 R class has been my wife's DD since we have owned it, 09 if I remember right, and the underside has very little surface rust.  The only thing is that in the winter I take it through a carwash once a week that has an underbody spray  but other than that it has lived outside the whole time we have owned it.

I am so glad I chose to live somewhere that doesn't salt the roads in snow season. I see GMT400 4x4s with perfect cab corners and Cherokees without windshield frame bubbles. Around here a "winter beater" is somebody's late model SUV that got a dent in San Francisco that they now drive in the snow in case it gets anotehr dent.

I'm winter dailying a Samurai. It is not ideal. These are not rust resistant vehicles. I also waited too late in the year to put the full top on, and it shrank too tight to get the snaps on so it's breezy as hell in there. No carpet, crummy heat. It's an icebox. Was dailying my Solstice, but we had a couple significant enough snows that I wasn't trying to throw that car off the road.

I get that these are aluminum and fiberglass, but even if I had one, I don't think I'd be driving it in this weather. Certainly not waiting in line at the local Burger King.

Move to the frigid North where it's too cold for salt to work. Problem solved.

My 07 Legacy is holding up way better than the previous two generations that I have owned and had rust out so hopefully Subaru has made some strides with corrosion protection.

I can say the 07 Subaru is doing better than my work '10 Prius which isn't terrible but the fasteners on that thing are just awful. In another 3 years though I think rust will be significantly worse than the Legacy right now which has more miles on it.

They do it because they do not value cars they way we do. And that has nothing to do with wealth. Its a mindset. That 911 is simply an appliance to be expended.

I guess I'm of the mindset that if I can't afford to drive my car until the weather is perfect than I can't afford the car.  For a lot of those vehicles they're either disposable to the owner or they'll pay someone to clean it up and keep it up. That Corvette in the drive thru looks like it is a sunny day, if you can't drive a Corvette on a sunny day when can you drive it?

It's their car, let them drive it.  Maybe they have found out that the car is pretty remarkable is snow....  I know I still say that a Miata with snow tires is one of the most remarkable cars in the winter.  Even the days where the snow was so deep that you can hear it scraping the bottom, I always got though.

The cars that I would never drive in the winter are the ones you can't replace.

A Land Rover in winter?  Who wants to walk home in this weather.  
I seem to be in the minority but I like seeing cars get used as cars.