Hi, I've just purchased a 2009 Ford Focus Zetec 1.8.
 

It has some substantial damage which is completely cosmetic but I'm worried about it rusting and becoming far worse.

https://imgur.com/a/67YSfCO

Does anyone have any idea what this would cost? I paid £1350 and it has 32,000 miles so it could potentially still be worth getting it fixed?

Reckon on the same again. You won't be far off. The car is eleven years old. There is no shortage of cars. If it lasts for three years, then it has been cheap motoring and at this age, unless it is rare* or special, it is going to be pretty much worthless. Its value is in its utility. Just use it and don't worry about it being stolen.

 

* Rare: any object readily available on Ebay.

38 minutes ago, tomshepp said:

Reckon on the same again. You won't be far off. The car is eleven years old. There is no shortage of cars. If it lasts for three years, then it has been cheap motoring and at this age, unless it is rare* or special, it is going to be pretty much worthless. Its value is in its utility. Just use it and don't worry about it being stolen.

 

* Rare: any object readily available on Ebay.

that's a shame, its very clean otherwise. I'd hope it lasts me more than just a few years but oh well.

I bought an old Punto a few years back for £200, it had a fair bit of cosmetic damage like yours, and nice ding in the front wing, there was no way I was going to pay the money to fix that up, and as it was a runaround / dog transporter I left it like that, I thought if I could get a year out of it I'd be grateful as it was so cheap, any rust was just lightly cleaned up and dabbed with rusteater and it lasted 3 years till it just started to wear out and became uneconomical to get through an MOT, surprisingly not through rust but by all the suspension parts wearing out at the same time!

If you feel you want to keep it for a long time and you don't want to drive a car with those dings then pay for it to be repaired, if it doesn't bother you, they're not structural and aren't going to cause an MOT failure, then live with it, you've got a nice cheap low mileage car there 👌

9 minutes ago, Frowma said:

 they're not structural and aren't going to cause an MOT failure, then live with it,

Heck some years ago I bashed my sill in like that on my Peugeot 405, did it in a multi storey carpark, misjudged an exit which had very high kerbs, went for a few enquiries about the sill repair, one garage said the sill will be an MOT failure if its not done properly, popped into several MOT stations and they all said the same! Because the sill has been bashed in, it has weakened the structure, I had the whole dent cut out and new section of sill welded back in place, was never happy with the car after that so sold on cheaply.  

57 minutes ago, Ian Lanc said:

Heck some years ago I bashed my sill in like that

Yes, unless it's already passed an MOT in that condition, I'd certainly be inclined to get that sill checked out before thinking about spending money. I would have thought the other bits could be tidied up to a reasonable standard though.

Thanks for your replies, I thought I'd ask for a quote from a body shop just to see how much it would cost and they've said £600.

I'm certain it did pass an MOT after the damage however I have it in the garage at the moment just to give it a general look over anyway. If its mechanically completely sound I might go for it.