Reply to "pre-purchase advice"

I agree. I think rust is the single biggest factor. When I bought mine, I thought I had inspected it closely (and knew there was some door skin & rocker panel rust), though it always got lots of compliments, a very sharp car. I was given an estimate by my BODY SHOP of $4,000 to strip the lower 6" around, correct what they expected needed correction, and repaint with basecoat/clearcoat job. We ended up stripping the car in & out, to do a color change & refurbish the whole car. As it turned out, the forward inner wheelhouse areas were shot, inside the rockers were shot, lower portions of the door latch pillars no longer existed, a door was in bad shape, and we're redoing the floorpans. It will end up being about $14,000 in body work,plus the $1,200 in plastic media blasting to get there. Take a very experienced Pantera owner with you. I suspect many other cars are in a similar boat and don't realize it. I looked at several cars obviously worse than mine when I bought. It's definitely more cost effective to buy a well-sorted-out P-car from the get-go (though you learn your car very well doing it as you go).