Yes. Agreed.
e) Posts in the main forum about moderators, or moderating decisions, will be removed without notice or discussion.
Admin edit.
OK, to get back to the nitty gritty (see what I did there?) I think there is overwhelming evidence to show that salt does indeed accelerate rusting on cars that are driven in the Northern Hemisphere in winter. One reason for the number of classic American cars from the 1940’s & 50’s still being driven in Cuba (apart from the USA embargo) is attributed to a complete lack of salt being laid down on the roads even though the Caribbean gets plenty of rain. I rest my case M’lud.
Metal rusts in air and salt makes it much worse.
Far from washing the salt away, rain accelerates the problem.
The spray from other vehicles ensures that it gets everywhere on the car to help rust panels from the inside out.
That’s why we use underseal, Waxoyl, Gummipflege etc. a good jet washer for the undercarriage and careful washing of the bodywork on any car. On an MX-5 not really built for the UK then careful inspection touching up and cleaning should be the norm as salt hazards and battle scars of all sorts can occur at anytime, using the car in winter especially so.
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You can get a good gist if salt is gone by tasting the roads and if clear, sticking to a given Council Borough (as different boroughs will have different criteria for when they salt). By me, for example, is a High St which is also used for the school buses, so due to health and safety, gets gritted even when it don’t really need to (those 50-50 days). When you think the salt is gone, i.e, you’ve had days of rain and it’s mild (and dry), I walk it with the dog and wet a finger, swipe it on the road and taste it. You can tell in an instant if salt is still there. So if that road is fine (and another which gets salted, but isn’t as busy), I’d say it’s fine if dry too. So sticking to the same Council region (which will have salted the roads to the same criteria over the borough), it’s fine.
You might look a bit of a nut job tasting roads, but you can bluff it by just pointing as if you’re showing the dog something. And anyway, if anyone asks what you’re doing, you could say it’s part of the commtment of having an MX-5. They will understand.
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Tasting roads, now that’s something new to discuss😁
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Just say “Needs less salt” and walk away.
Though one day you will run your finger through something you’re going to wish had more salt on it 
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When I worked for a famous motor manufacturer in the 70’s 80’s and 90’s we used to protect our car bodies by immersing them in a cathodic dip prior to the paint process.
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Inadvisable on the M1.
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Just brilliant! 
Classy flyde? Gee us a cloo!
I’m disappointed you said you wiped your finger on the road and then licked your finger, up to that point I had picture in my head of you kneeling in the road and licking the tarmac with your dog standing on the kerb looking embarrassed 
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It’s surprising how easy it is to detect if salt’s still there.
It wasn’t British Leyland..
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My dad bought a 2-y-o A60 van off the local engineering company without knowing why they were offloading it.
2 months before one of their drivers was delivering parts to Southport and couldn’t resist having his lunch at the beach cafe. He was just finishing his mug of tea when someone came in and asked if anyone owned a blue van. The tide was half way up the door. All the chassis box sections must have been filled with sea water.
The van lasted less than a year before it became rotten as a pear.
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Sea salt is the worst. It travels in the wind, the gales.
One of my colleagues lived in a superb sea-view apartment in Brighton, blessed with a permanent resident’s space in one of the well-ventilated multi-story car-parks halfway up the hill from the beach. He drove to work in London seven days a fortnight on shift, same as the rest of us.
I remember his pride in showing us his first ever brand new car, a MkII P6 Rover 3500.
Six months later he asked a couple of us car fiddlers to have a look at a rust spot on the driver’s door. He tapped it and we could hear stuff falling off the inside of the panel.
We suggested he tapped it a bit harder and his forefinger went through. We had to lever the metal back a bit more with the car key to safely extract his digit.
So the dealer replaced four doors, the boot lid and bonnet under warranty.
At the first annual service he got a call from the dealer saying they’ve decided to scrap the car because the passenger door hinges pulled out of a rusty A pillar and the front suspension mounts were about to fail.
Apparently there was no paint anywhere out of sight on that car, no primer, no underseal, no nothing. Rover had halved its time in the paint shop by simply not painting it.
He was refunded his whole purchase price and bought a Stag instead. And that’s another cautionary tale.
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“Does salt really rust a car?” - a very easy short answer… yes.
If you’re interested, you can take a look at Cyclic Corrosion Testing if you haven’t already. You can also look at test results and product performance from the likes of Bilt Hamber. As a company they’re also excellent at responding to questions, and providing technical information. You can email them, but make sure you’ve been through the FAQs first.
Here’s a link a reports, involving their Dynax S50 product:
While salt spray testing may not exactly replicate ‘real world’ conditions, it’s still generally accepted as the standard corrosion test method and allows you to see what happens when sodium chloride and water combine…
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ISTR that the Rover had Aluminium boot and bonnet, perhaps wings too, but the problem was that they were bolted to steel which rotted away.
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Very interesting. Thank you for posting.
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Mx-5’s have aluminium panels bolted to steel too.
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