[bumby]

While I suspect you’re right about newer cars because of galvanized steel etc, but I also wonder how much of the contrarian viewpoint is due to sampling bias. Maybe your Acura was just good luck? I’ve had a domestic wagon of similar vintage that went through many Midwest winters. The exhaust rusted off and so did the sub-frame leading me to offload it many years ago. We really need better data than our personal anecdotes to understand the problem.

[phil21]

Definitely need more than anecdote. Exhaust system though is a wear item, I'd expect to replace that every decade or so.

Sub-frame, not so much!

A quick google shows graphs for "Average age of the US used car fleet" to be around 6 years in 1975, and increasing to 12 years today. Not enough time today before family arrives to really dig further though.

[bumby]

Very true, and car longevity has been steadily increasing. Although, I don’t think the bulk of them failures are attributable to “rotting body panels”. I remember when a car with 100k miles was considered essentially dead, whereas more drive trains routinely last twice that long.