When I bought my Williams I did no research did a poor inspection and hardly haggled.
I didn't care, it was a lovely car at the right price ten miles away. How couldn't I buy it?
I knew there were some issues with the bodywork, and early in my ownership I stumbled across this comment on a thread on a Subaru site:
"rust on the arches is, how can I say....a GOOD thing.
You know it hasn't been covered up by a bodge job. If its good, buy it then get it fixed yourself properly."
And so I felt smug and muddled along, fixing a sill last year. But then this year I knew I couldn't put off dealing with the issues any longer. The wheels weren't holding air properly and I knew that refurbed wheels would show up the bodywork. I'd had a nightmare with my other car stripping it down and cutting back to sound metal and a full repaint, and I didn't want a museum piece for a car that I'd be worried about parking in a supermarket.
So I decided to get the rot cut out in situ. It looked like it would be a toughish job but not that bad. The trouble was that when the work started, the rot didn't stop, it kept on going seemingly forever. Added to that, it was clear that it had been fixed in so many ways in so many places (some very well, some very not well) that there was a false impression of how bad it was, because the work had always been on top, and never work down to the core of the problem.
I really like the outcome, and I'm sure the car feels tauter to drive as a result. (I realise this is probably a delusion.)
But the moral of the story is believe nobody on condition and expect the worst. I looked up that Scooby quote again and discovered it was written in 2004. It may well have applied then, but I think it is virtually impossible for it to apply now.
There are some before during and after pics below, for your possible amusement and/or horror!