1975 Pontiac Catalina Safari

I remember even growing up in the Midwest you’d see a lot of the -73-‘76 big GMs with little brown rust stain lines running down from where open (broken) paint spot welds especially along the body side moldings and vinyl top moldings, left unchecked those really opened up bigger rust holes. Then water , and salt under the vinyl tops. Forget about it.....

 

It's not unheard of phenomena. In 2010 I was looking for Mosrite Guitars a lot then all of a sudden 2 or 3 of the 350 model showed up at once and they probably didn't even make 400 of them.

I still see that behavior in Pennsylvania, (Edit: ) only thing is people are just too lazy to paint a simple piece of metal in an easily accessible spot. Too busy, gotta head off to McDonald's to suck our souls away.

 

The really big problem with roof rust is once a hole up top gets introduced the water goes SOMEWHERE. I think the double-walled roof that they introduced on these cars caused a LOT of rust problems in the roof. I've had 6 of these wagons and 4 doors and every single one has had rust problems in the roof, vinyl top or not. My post door cars have ALL leaked water at the windows where the A-pillar, windshield, and door meet the roof - water gets trapped in the trim and drips down on the door glass or dribbles onto the weatherstripping. If you aren't mopping that up or keeping the car covered 24-7 you get water in the A-pillar and kick panels, leading to surface rust since GM didn't paint or treat that metal in any way (out of 9 cars I've taken apart, only one didn't have rust there, even the desert cars had it). GM's metal quality in that era isn't stellar in some circles either. The wagons alone are notorious for not draining water out of their rear side glass sections and rotting the channels. My buddy specializes in these cars too and he's seen the same thing. The pre-1970 and post-1976 cars don't seem to have this problem that bad. I love the 1971-1976 cars but they have some really annoying water intrusion and rust areas that aren't always visible. Combine that with road salt\snow slush and these cars likely rotted away quickly in the salt belt.

By contrast my '67 and '68 wagons have been seriously neglected in their lives and have next to no rust or rot problems inside the car.

 

I've seen a lot of the Colonnade wagons of that area rot out around the rear side windows with the ugly stains also.

 

$2050 with reserve not met - less than 24 hours to go.

 

No sale.

 

It's sold now.

 

Derby car now?

 

I guess not, according to the seller.