The trick is to buy used cars from regions that don't have salts during the winter. If I look at cars imported from US, I look at ones from Texas and etc.

I brought a pickup truck from CA to the northeast and promptly sold it for $2000 more than I bought it for 4 years prior. Inventory issues were part of it but indeed the rust free frame was highly desirable.

That’s not at all obvious to me, who drives a 18 year old Honda that’s lived its entire life in upstate NY, NH, and MA.

It’s true that rust will likely be the eventual reason to retire it, but probably not for another 5-10 years.

Go outside and count the cars that are older than 15 years. Then go to California and do it. It’s different.

No one claimed that salt usage made no difference. That's a far lesser claim than concluding that someone driving a 17 year old car has obviously never lived where the roads are salted.

Despite being a lower percentage than CA, there are plenty of perfectly usable 17+ year old cars on the roads in New England.

We do, we have a couple Toyotas older than that. Paint tech has come a long way since cars were rusting out left and right.

17yo was actually right in the era of the Toyota rust fiasco.

I vaguely remember that, was that on the trucks, specifically?

Eastern Europe represent. We use lots of road salt and plenty 17 year old cars.

It's not really comparable. Northern US and Canada use way more salt on roads and it's not the regular salt (it's forbidden) but a pretty aggressive mix of various salts.

I've never seen so many not so old but already rusty cars as in Quebec, Canada.