Power wash it and spray paint. Shouldn’t be a problem if kept in a garage. It’s the pinch welds where I’d be worried about it as the salt gets in there and shit will rust from the back side like the box on my Silverado. 2011 80k miles and wheel wells are rusted and a front fender. I think GM saved money on body panels for my generation of 2500HD and they rust like the 1500s do.

That is fine.

That looks like 2-3 winters at most.  It's the number of winters, minus a winter or two for fluidfilm/LPS#3 that rust out cars, not miles.  

Driving 1k or 20k a year have essentially no bearing on it. A family member just scrapped a 2006 with <100k miles after the rear suspension mounts started ripping through the body.

You could fix most of that in an afternoon with a wire wheel and POR-15 if you wanted.

Looks pretty good to me

Lol… guess I live on a different planet being in the rust belt.

I’m guessing if your worried about it I would walk away because it won’t stop bugging you, but in Ohio that would be very acceptable.

Love all the people from the Rust Belt saying that’s nothing!

Rust never sleeps.

I would have never even looked at anything from up north. You guys can keep your rust buckets.

None of my cars had that on it and I owned them for years.

It's funny that people keep thinking the all of the north is the rust belt.

I live further north than 50% of Canadians and our cars don't rust. My 26 year old pickup with 270k has zero rust. Once you go east of Montana, all bets are off.

That’s my biggest complaint about living here. Cars don’t last like they should. Carmakers don’t give a shit because they sell more cars.

The mentality in the rust belt for the winter is that you should always be able to drive the speed limit and make it to work at 3am in the middle of a blizzard because the work needs to get done no matter what. Nothing should stop or slowdown. It’s old anymore. People are such wussies now that any forecast for snow and panic sets in, salt trucks are filled and brine trucks go out 24-36 hours in advance and coat the highways and interstates. Our city salt shed is still full because we didn’t get winter here but they sure filled the trucks for even a trace of forecasted snow and then spend 4 hours dumping the salt back out and vibrating the dumps. The salt shed is 2 blocks away from my house so I hear and see them dumping the salt back into the shed. Then they leave the street covered in salt because they’re too lazy to broom it into the shed. When I say covered in salt I mean covered in salt. It’s a large amount.

Normal to me

Yup… it will keep going.

A 40,000 mile car never driven in the salt won’t have any of that rust.

Yeah, for a northern car it is good…

That is nothing for a car where they salt.

If you want to keep it power wash it.  Brush or scrape any loose rust.  Fluid film or Woolwax it.

totaled by NM standards.

Just FYI for those who care, the term "rust belt" has nothing to do with where they salt the roads in the winter. Not trying to be a smart-ass.

"The Rust Belt is a colloquial term used to describe the geographic region stretching from New York through the Midwest that was once dominated by the coal industry, steel production, and manufacturing. The Rust Belt became an industrial hub due to its proximity to the Great Lakes, canals, and rivers, which allowed companies to access raw materials and ship out finished products.

The region received the name “Rust Belt” in the late 1970s, after a sharp decline in industrial work left many factories abandoned and desolate, causing increased rust from exposure to the elements. It is also referred to as the Manufacturing Belt and the Factory Belt."

You're right, I always mix up salt belt and rust belt.

My paved road sounds and feels like you’re driving on a gravel road due to all the salt if there is even a forecast of snow.

As for the Op, for a northern car, that doesn’t look bad for age and miles. But if it’s a forever car or if it’s going to constantly bug you, I’d send it back and find a southern one.

I wish I could find a car that clean.

I'm going to take a different tack. Are you going to mod the car? Particularly the suspension? If you do, you will find out the hard way what the difference is between true "surface rust" and northern salt-induced rust. You will find a lot of bolts/nuts that either snap off or strip. If you're just going to drive the car, it will be (mostly) fine as others have said, but there will be nooks and crannies where rust will start to progress faster than it would have on any Southern car. This will start to show up in 10 years, perhaps less. How long do you plan to keep it?

I recently did some work on a friend's 2010 Jeep JKU that was a Northern car. Had to remove one of the skid plates, 4 bolts. Rust didn't look too bad. Soaked all of them down with PB Blaster a day prior. One came out hard. Two snapped off. The last one ripped the sheet metal out that its nut was welded to, because rust was all that was holding the sheet metal in place. Gave him the Jeep back, he took it to a shop, they took one look and said "fugeddaboutit", and he promptly got rid of it on a trade.