Now having owned loads of cortinas , capris etc in the 70,s , 80 s I know all about fords & rust , but all the fords we’ve had of late have been fine , nothing ( though nigh on new cars ) , but last weekend I was washing the focus ( 65 plate ) & where the rear wing meets the rear bumper there’s a piece of rust about the size of a 10 p piece ( or what shows ) , I had a wander upto fords to look at other focuses that model / age & couldn’t see it on any others, so bit baffling , no damage to area , rubbed it down , applied rust preventative ( years ago painted red oxide on it ) & will watch & see , but thought days of rust were behind me with newer cars , obviously not
Maybe you got a Friday afternoon car.
Salt is the problem we have, it only needs a pinprick to get in and then it will do its worse.
Rust still does its thing underneath and in the hidden sections but hardly anyone even looks underneath any more so its unseen for most.
They made great strides in corrosion prevention, but they dropped a massive clanger around the 90’s.
Most manufacturers made cars that were rust resistant, safe comfortable perfomed well and were economical, had a minimal of electronics and what was there was often repairable, its a no brainer that certain cars made in that era and the early noughties are snapped up by East Europeans (who generally have more common and mechanical sense than typical credit card rich westerners when it comes to cars) or were bought and exported by the boatload to Africa, because they were good tough designs which lasted.
The car makers learned from that and they’ll never make that mistake again with cars designed for the west, whilst your new cars won’t show rust topside until they’re riddled underneath, it isn’t even going to be rust that scraps them, its all the electronics and parts that have been designed with a limited life and out of being able to be maintained cheaply, this isn’t by accident its obsolescence by design.
Take the simple wheel bearing, a humble item with no electronics even, at one time a competent home mechanic who thought to regrease and adjust those bearings up now and again the originals would last 30 years or more, so they moved on to the pre-assembled sealed unadjustable bearing pack, once worn or the seal failed scrap, but even they weren’t expensive enough, so now the bearings come pre fitted so you have to buy the complete hub (unless you can find an alternative and are skilled enough to extract the bearing from its position). A new outer taper roller bearing from a factor might cost you £15, a new hub could easily be £350+, both take around an hour to fit depending.
This is what’s been happening to the car as a whole, they want you on the PCP merry go round, for now.