Dumb question, he’s not president yet.

The lower the grade the faster it rusts. Forgot most people don’t know that. Its rusting because there is iron in steel (duh). It’s rusting quickly because it has low concentration of rust inhibitors like chromium or nickel. Increasing the concentration of these metals makes it rust slower. It also makes it harder to tool into a car body, making it a shifty choice for a car shell.

The article you linked is either uninformed or being misleading about “free iron”. That just means there are no rust inhibitors so they are leaving free energy available on the surface of an iron grain at the surface of the material. This makes it rust quickly where those grains are. There are millions of these grains at the surface where the metal interfaces with air. The iron particles are in the body panel, not on top of it.

I have an MS in mechanical engineering focused in materials and I wrote a few papers on 3d printing of stainless tool steels. I’ve read further down the thread and you are completely wrong.

It’s rusting because it’s a low grade stainless. Its low grade because stainless steel work hardens when bent or machined. Lower grades have less issues with work hardening. They made this choice to save on tooling costs I assume.

Work hardening is when you permanently deform a material it gets more brittle. Stainless is an unbelievably stupid choice for a vehicle body because it needs to be formed into complex shapes which require lots of deformation. It’s why SS cars feature mostly large flat panels and also partially why we have been moving towards aluminum body panels.

That “Don’t Be A Sucker” film made by the department of war in the 1940s is crazy to watch now. It’s almost a 1 to 1 comparison between Trump and the bad guy. Though that film is a bit inaccurate about how religion responded to the nazis.