Would you consider buying this car with a rusty frame/floor?

[ThirdeYe]

I'm considering buying a high mileage 2009 Saturn Vue from a family member. They've owned it since it had only 10,000 miles on it and it's well maintained with tons of maintenance records. Extremely clean interior and the outside is in very good shape aside from one rust spot on the rear quarter panel as well. It wasn't beat on, either. Runs and drives well aside from a few other known issues that wouldn't have completely stopped me from considering it. Anyway, I noticed on some of the service records that the techs constantly noted a rusty frame. I decided to get under it and do an oil change on it to see if they were exaggerating or not. The front had some surface rust on the frame, but it didn't look seriously bad. I did notice a few spots though, about halfway down the vehicle that looked fairly bad where there were some holes/splitting:

Spot 1)



Spot 2)



Would you consider this serious/dangerous and make you avoid even making an offer, even if the vehicle is quite cheap?


Thanks!

 

[philipp10]

I would not buy it. It's next to impossible to stop. Only if I was planning to get maybe just a year out of it....then sure.

 

[Kjmack]

Nope , unsafe at any speed

 

[dishdude]

No, that frame rail is pretty bad.

 

[Trav]

Oh hell no! That thing belongs on the bone yard.

 

[Taildragger]

 

[mattd]

That car is scrap.

 

[ThirdeYe]

Thanks for the quick input everyone, I'll let them know that I'll pass on it. I've been in Michigan my entire life and dealt with a lot of rust, but nothing that looked quite like this. Glad I noticed before I made an offer... Crazy to think I just drove this to Florida and back.

 

[eljefino]

It's not worth another oil change.

If you went at those spots with a ball peen hammer you'd be shocked.

 

[Rand]

no way.

Its odd how only certain spots are really bad..
From personal experience with subaru...
on that era subaru a large % of the underside starts going at same time

 

[Kestas]

Reminds me of one car we had in our family. I went to do some work by lifting the car with a jack when I noticed the outer sheet metal buckling. I told my dad this car was unsafe to work under. He called the junk yard next day to haul the car away.

 

[KGMtech]

Get the scrap value and do the roads and other drivers a solid.

 

[ThirdeYe]

no way.

Its odd how only certain spots are really bad..
From personal experience with subaru...
on that era subaru a large % of the underside starts going at same time

It is weird -- the car is in great shape and most of the undercarriage is just surface rust, but there were those few spots that looked bad.

 

[vavavroom]

I'd buy it if I were on a suicide mission.

 

[Rmay635703]

Looks like a 3 year old Wisconsin car

 

[AZjeff]

Something is wrong. This is BITOG, someone has to come along and say buy it with no worries I drove far worse for 200k miles.

Those pics give me flashbacks to some of the junk I drove early on in NW Rustylvania.

 

[Eddie]

ASL NO

 

[Number_35]

Reminds me of one car we had in our family. I went to do some work by lifting the car with a jack when I noticed the outer sheet metal buckling. I told my dad this car was unsafe to work under. He called the junk yard next day to haul the car away.

This reminds of working on my sister- and brother-in-law's Windstar a few years ago. The van was about 14 years old, had a lot of miles on it, and had lived here its whole life.

I was trying to find the brake fluid leak - tried to jack up one corner, and the jack was rising faster than the jack point, accompanied by the sound of crunchy oxidized steel. Uh oh!

We did find eventually lift the van safely, and replaced a rusted brake line, so they had brakes again, but they did retire the van not too long afterwards.

 

[NormanBuntz]

Michigan rust? I'd keep looking.

 

[Chris142]

It's junk