Do all 2005 ish Mercedes rust?

[Humble Pi]

I'm looking a purchasing a sub £2000 auto diesel. Always liked Mercedes, doing a bit of googling seems general consensus is anything Mercedes before 06 will be a rust bucket. Wanted to ask the PH wise, is this true?

Car in question...

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201...

[lcs_turbo]

I've got an estate version of the car you have posted with 102000 miles and there's no rust on it.

I too found a number of articles online saying they were prone to rust when I was buying mine. Maybe I was lucky

[Humble Pi]

lcs_turbo said:

I've got an estate version of the car you have posted with 102000 miles and there's no rust on it.

I too found a number of articles online saying they were prone to rust when I was buying mine. Maybe I was lucky

I wouldn’t mind an estate version either!

Anything I need to watch out for when buying apart from the usual stuff?

[AMG V12]

From what I've read and seen, after the facelift the rust problems for that generation of C Class were solved. That facelift happened around the 53/04 plates.

I've got a 56 plate C Class and it's not got any rust. My dad had a 2001 version and that rusted like mad.

My advice is that you'd be fine with the one posted and to just check around the arches and shut lines for any that you go and see.

[vodkamartini1]

AMG V12 said:

From what I've read and seen, after the facelift the rust problems for that generation of C Class were solved. That facelift happened around the 53/04 plates....My dad had a 2001 version and that rusted like mad.

I had a 53 plate C180K and that started to show some signs of rust. Got written off when a clapped out Civic rear-ended me so I never had to deal with the problem in the end...

[Stella Tortoise]

Galvanisation started earlier than 2006, I had a 2004 C class which was galvanised.

Google might throw up a chart for different models.

[ZX10R NIN]

From 2003 onwards rust won't be an issue unless it's had a bad repair.