My father worked for a company supplying power presses to carmakers. I recall him telling me that the outer layer of the steel coils would be rusty so should be cut off before feeding the clean steel into the presses. He turned up at a BL plant one day to see they were just feeding the rusty end straight into the press. He pointed out that the rusty metal was going into someone's car......i don't believe the rest of conversation was constructive.
I think I had one of those once: a Maxi that was rusty under the paintwork. The doors ended up with holes in them in under 5 years despite attempts to treat the rust. This was in the same year that Volvo's were advertising 17 years life expectancy for their 240s. Interestingly, from memory, they were also advertising the fact that the cars were very largely recyclable and that many of their components including steel items, were sourced from the UK.
