I'm looking into buying a C300 W204 from 2014. It has around 10,000 mi. However this car was driven the 10k in Buffalo, NY. I'm a little bit worried since Buffalo is on the east coast and supposedly the cars get faster rusty on the east coast. It is also not an official Mercedes Benz dealer. Any thoughts?
Inspect, inspect, inspect.
I bought several MB from East Coast, including W210 who is corrosion prone, yet they have been spotless.
Lot of MB owners have other cars to drive over the salt and keep Merc in garage.
As far as the east coast goes, we've had summer homes on the ocean in NJ as well as a winter home on the ocean in FL, and there was always an unspoken awareness of the thread of rust from the the sea spray and salty air. That thread becomes less of a problem as you move southward and inland.
In the northeast, however, as in Buffalo, cars are subjected to yearly winters with snow and ice treated with salt and salty solutions on the roads. In my opinion, it's a bigger thread than anything coming of the east "coast".
After only 2 years and 10,000 miles, it's hard for me to believe a car would be at serious risk of rust just because it was in/near Buffalo unless the car was seriously neglected and abused. I'm talking buried under salt for those 2 years. I'm from upstate NY and also lived in VT as a kid. The risk of rust was much higher 30, 40 or 50 years ago, and rust treatments for cars were common at one time. Today's cars seem to show much less evidence of rust, and in the 50+ years I've been driving. I've never had one with visible rust.
If the overall condition of the car indicates it's been taken care of and you do a visual while it's on a lift (just for peace of mind), I can't imagine you'd have any existing issues with rust on the car you describe. Continue to properly care for it, and it many never develop rust.
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