It reverses into the sea. On purpose.

Everything else we treat collects salt by accident — coastal air, the odd slipway, spray off the N2.

This one backs a boat trailer down a slipway into the Indian Ocean, and tends to do it on exactly the days the weather is bad enough that someone is already in trouble.

That pale crust packed into the leaf pack and dried across the diff is not road dust. It is salt, on bare steel, waiting for the next bit of moisture. This is the vehicle every warning in our guide is describing.

And the stakes are different. A seized winch on a weekend bakkie is a bill. On this one it is a launch that does not happen. So it got the full strip: wheels off, plates out, every seam cleaned, de-salted and neutralised before any coating went on.