Rust

A rusty Ford.

Now there's a surprise.

Bitumen Black!!

Be more suprising if it was a functioning 11 year old Fiat :-)

Chris

it needs sand blasting to stand any chance of a reasonable time before bubbling through again.

Phone a ford dealer and ask them what the colour is.

B4 is a ford colour I believe.

Any good car shop (not halfords) will have a book with car paint codes.

Mrcheerful

Agreed. i asked my Rover dealer, before it disappeared, the colour of my car as I had exactly the same problem with Halfrauds.

Take a look here squire,

"Chris Whelan" wrote

Yes, and of course, Italian cars don't go rusty at all.

Krycek ( snipped-for-privacy@ntlworld.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

It's going to need a bit more than paint.

It's going to need a fair chunk of cutting away of rotten s**te and welding in new metal.

Rear arches are structural.

They've been a lot less rust-prone than Fords since the late 80s.

"SteveH" wrote

Evidence?

Alfas maybe. Fiats seem to be worse again than they've been since the early '80s.

I've never seen a rusty 145/146 or 155, same with the 164 (although there were some iffy early ones, but later ones don't appear to rust), MkII Unos don't rust (but not many left 'cos they're not economical to fix if they go wrong these days), Tipos and Tempras didn't rust either.

However, I see rusty late shape Escorts, some rusty Mondeos (again, they tend to be scrapped early due to mechanical faults on the whole, though), Fiestas up to the Focus-a-like model rust quite rampantly, and the less said about the Ka, the better (3 years old and rot on the sills appears to be fairly common).

Can't say I've noticed - the Bravo/a and Marea don't appear to rot, Puntos are much less prone to it than similar aged Fiestas and you just can't compare the Sei and Cinq with the Ka, wich rots rampantly.

That's a spectacular pair of rose tinted, Fiat made specs you're wearing.

You're right about not being able to compare the Sei or Cinq to the Ka though. The Fiats are buzzy little ill handling shit boxes, the Ka is the best handling thing in its class.

That doesn't stop them rusting though :-)

That's disgraceful from a manufacturer that's been in business for around a century.

Be surprised. My missus has an 14 year old (J Reg) Fiat Panda, Automatic, which is immaculate. All she has ever done for the last 8 years is wash it once a month. It is amazing to be honest the condition that it is in. Not a patch of rust or anything. And is used every few days.