Buy a car without physically seeing it

Take the offer to have someone knowledgable inspect it. After six hard years of replacing pretty much every major piece of sheetmetal on my Dart, I probably exhibit the worse case scenario of “sight unseen.” Pictures just can’t tell the whole story. A couple of years ago I flew to the East coast with cashier’s check in hand to buy a well-known Dart Charger. The car was depicted as having no rust. Within two minutes of looking at the car in person I could tell it had significant rust issues, even though they might not be obvious to most people. The problem with these old cars, is, my opinion, that there is no such thing as “rust free.” It’s there, you just can’t see it. My donor car was an Arizona car its’ entire life, but it still had corrosion in the roof and quarters due to condensation and moisture absorption from accumulated dirt. Also, I discovered old crash damage in the rear that would have affected the alignment of the trunk. It’s very easy to end up having to repair the used parts you bought to repair existing parts. You can’t easily look under headliners, or up inside cowl vents, A pillars and sail panels, not to mention rocker panels. Just because the rocker panels are good is no guaranteed of no corrosion either. My car was a total rust bucket, but the rocker panels are very good. Why? I think it’s because the drain holes never clogged. It was from Washington state, and almost all the rust I found was probably from condensation, and sitting with an open window in a high-rainfall and humidity state. Even the drip rails were rusted through under the factory sealer. In my opinion, unless you have an original car that has been intentionally stored in a low humidity environment, you probably have some corrosion. Later model cars have better corrosion protection and might not be as much at risk, but anything from the ‘60’s and ‘70’s will have some rust somewhere that will probably need attention.