[michel richard]

John,

Hate to speak this kind of news, but my experience is that rust is often (well, I first wrote "always", but corrected) worse than it looks. This could be because I am in Canada where roads are salted a lot.

The standard is called the "but"test. Get a couple of big guys to sit in the car with the top off and see how well the doors close. if they jam at all, you have a problem. Also, a variant of this test is to examine the door catches carefully and look for excessive wear. If the body has begun to sag, the alignment will be different and this will usually cause excess wear on the catches.

I would suspect that if you have rust on the sails and and near the door latches, you should very carefully examine the rest of the car.

Standard rust places are under the battery tray, along the floors and under the rocker panels etc . . .

This site has a guide to buying which should be helpful in figuring out the places to watch.

Still, good luck.