The unleaded transition started in the early 1970s you can find plenty of boats that take unleaded gas.

Of all the problems cars of that generation have the one that bugs me the most is poor rustproofing. You see people driving classic cars all the time in dry places like California and New Mexico but in Upstate NY road salt will eat a car like that alive if you drive it in the winter.

So if we got a boat we'd need a garage to keep it in and another car to be a driver in the winter.

You can't really rustproof against salt, at least for metals. It's an abrasive and it accelerates the chemical reactions on the surface of the metal.

Don't know if you've owned e.g. a 1980s Toyota Corolla in an environment that's always-wet, always-salted for six months a year like Western Norway.

The difference to modern cars is night and day: The Corolla rusts to death in five years, as in you can stick your whole arm through the holes in the wheel well if the structural integrity of the chassis doesn't fail first. Whereas most cars produced after 1990 will last about two decades without owner rustproofing.

You obviously can't dictate that all redox reactions will halt, but the manufacturers have absolutely done something that makes their cars rust slower.

The "end-user rustproofing" we do here generally consists of spraying some super-heavy, super-sticky oil-based coating onto the metal so it doesn't get wet. But this obviously complicates other maintenance.

If the manufacturer or the customer applies a thick heavy undercoating I think it can make a big difference. It's robust enough to resist the abrasive nature of the salt, at least for a while.

The thing is I don't think manufacturer's like adding products like that as it messes with the fuel economy results. It's actually quite heavy, despite being just a "coating"

>If the manufacturer or the customer applies a thick heavy undercoating I think it can make a big difference.

IIRC most manufacturers, at least in Europe, at some point started zinc galvanization, this prevents most rust from forming:

https://www.fj.co/blog/land-cruiser-chassis-galvanized/

The link you provided seems to be a niche company that specializes in reconditioning existing vehicles. Not a manufacturer of new vehicles.

It had some cool pictures of the process, that's why I linked it.

In any case, most of what I find is in German. Like here it states that premium manufacturers started using zinc galvanization in the 80s: https://www.seat.de/service-zubehoer/technik-lexikon/k/karos....

It also says it protects from rust despite abrasion.

You can just use unleaded gas, you might have to replace valves and such but it'll work.

Most cars ran just fine on unleaded. Unless you actually raced them, or otherwise worked the engine hard the rest of the car would die before the lack of lead killed the engine.

Note that I live in an area where we salt the roads in winter. If you live in a dry desert old cars last a lot longer, and you might actually need to worry about your valves.

the airport