Reply to "Pantera #4406"

Probably the solution to the door "dings" which is the least traumatic is to just fill them with body filler? If you hammered them out, you still would need to use filler.

Every one of these cars has suffered or is suffering some sort of sheet metal issues. It is the nature of the way the car was manufactured.

Some are worse then others.


In my opinion, what you see in the rear of the car rust wise is a result of driving the car in the rain. It throws up a "rooster tail" of water that "pressurizes" water into areas it wasn't intended to go and in addition the original assembly used minimal drain holes.

There probably are cars that once delivered new, never spent any time in anything but desert conditions. Even with those, I wouldn't be shocked if there were indications of rust issues.

The entire body SHOULD have been submerged in an electrostatic primer like US Ford cars were or certain parts should have been galvanized before assembly. It wasn't.

This is just life with an Italian assembled sheet steel car.


It isn't JUST the Italians. '60s and early '70s Porsches are absolute rust buckets as well. They don't get better until at least the late '70s if not the mid '80s.

It isn't limited to Europe either. Japanese cars of that era are perhaps the absolute worst for rust and the US still struggles to a degree with the issue.

Why? I don't know. Certainly the euro engineers knew about it. The Corporate heads just didn't care apparently? Part of a designed obsolescence probably?

That attitude does seem to be improving substantially now.