On my first trip to Texas, I thought the junk yards were used car lots.
When I first got here to AZ in the 90s I had the same impression. The Ideal thing back in NY was to take a motor that the car had rotted away from before it hit 50K on the odometer and pair it to an AZ sourced car that had 200,000 on it with no rust. Lots of muscle cars still up there came from out here. The ones their not garaged are but fond memories.
When I did the frame off mentioned above, the cab sat sanded to the bare metal for months and developed no rust (no rain and about 2 percent humidity.