How far will a PO go to hide rust?, Somehow, I was surprised... Options

[Pnambic]

I know that the rule is buyer-beware when it comes to buying 30 yr old cars especially from individuals, but it seems to me like this guy almost went to more trouble to hide the rust than it would have taken to repair it.
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Ah well....here are the pictures.

After I pulled off the passenger side rocker, I grabbed the screwdeiver and decided to start poking around. I hit under the jackplate and to my surprise and consternation, the screwdriver drove right into the material just like it was foam....and ya know why? BECAUSE IT WAS FOAM.

I took a picture to document the fun and started picking away. Almost the entire jack plate had been formed out of foam, smoothed out and then painted to make it look just like a real one. Shouldn't be a real tough fix, which is kinda what perplexed me. Why go to such trouble to hide a relatively easy fix? Intentionally concealing something like this seems almost criminal.
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Oh yeah....found a similar, but far smaller occurance on the driver side but not at the jack plate.

Maybe we've had a post on this before, but do you have any Perplexing PO Puzzles you'd like to post about?

[need4speed]

On my Ghia, the PO repaired some battery-tray rot. . . . right on the 45-degree angle where the flat tray angles down to the rim of the compartment where it meets the decklid (hood-door). Instead of replacing the panel, or welding in a patch, he bent the metal to meet, so instead of a nice smooth, straight, 45-degree angle all the way across, it's 45-degrees on the right-side, and about 25 on the left side, (where the battery sits) - and he smoothed it all out with bondo. The result of this is that the engine cooling sheetmetal sits about 1" higher than the floor of the compartment on the left side than it does on the right.

Oh, it's functional - because the seal fills in the gap nicely. And if you close the decklid, you don't see the uglyness. Even if you open the decklid, most people don't notice it unless I point it out. In fact, at first, I thought my engine-tin was simply crooked or bent. Then I thought maybe the transmission fork was bent (and the engine thus oriented a tad clockwise). When I got underneath with a flashlight, and took a look at the welds, I finally figured out what the sneaky bastard did.

Maybe not easier than an actual repair - but not a whole lot more difficult certainly. I mean - if you're gonna paint the whole car anyway, why in Wilhelm Karmann's name would you DO a thing like that?!