Mx5 advice

[Spare tyre]

I'm getting rid of my sensible car and hobby car as its too much fannying about.

I'm looking to replace it with a mx5 mk2.5 something with heated seats and ac

Needs to have heated seats as I'll be borrowing the mrs's car when work requires and she won't have any of it if there's no heated seats

Now I've seen a couple of 2004ish 1.8's that tick all the boxes, however is the rust really as bad as they say

I don't want to end up with something that's gonna need a Bunch spending on it at mot time as I only wanna spend 2-3 k on the car initially.

Are the horror pics of crusty 5-10 year old cars really representative or am I worrying about nothing

I will probably be looking around Xmas / jam time, are they actually notably cheaper in winter or is that a load of guff

Any pointers as to spotting the rust would be lovely

[Spare tyre]

Thanks guys will start looking, great bits of info