What To Do When Your Car is in a Flood

Some years ago, my mother-in-law purchased a used 2001 Toyota Echo from a Toyota dealership. I asked the salesman if they had any service records for the car. He came back with a thick bundle of paper. Turns out the car had been on the lot for about a year, and during that time the dealership had replaced many brake components, some of the wheel bearings, and a complete clutch package. I was curious why the car, which was only 3 or 4 years old at the time, required so much maintenance. Never got a satisfactory answer; and I advised the mom-in-law against buying the car. Something just didn’t seem right. She, however, insisted on buying it, thinking she was getting a great deal, in light of all the new parts on the car.

Well, several years later, over the space of about 18 months, the bottom side of the car has disintegrated. The rocker panels and the bottom edges of the door skins turned to brown dust and simply disappeared. The bottom edges of the wheel wells have that thick layered flakey rust that goes right through the entire thickness of the metal. All of the various bolts, metal clips and metal lines under the floor are returning to nature. Near as I can figure, the original owners were tooling around the beach at low tide, got the car stuck, and the tide came in several times before the poor car could be rescued. (We live on Canada’s Atlantic Coast.) They probably traded the car at the dealership shortly afterward.

The car was clean and solid when it was bought. There are quite a few Echos still on the road in these parts, and in spite of the salted roads in winter and salt air year-round, I’ve never seen one that was rusty. Salt water corrosion is a bitch, and Rust Never Sleeps.