"I drive mine from after the first good Spring rain that washes the salt off the roads till they get salted again with the first snow-fall."

I do the same thing. If you live in an area where they use salt on the roads in the winter it's pretty hard to drive a car in the winter AND keep it for a long time. I use my old beater '89 Bronco II in the winter. It's got a massive steel frame underneath, so nothing important will rust off. The body has a few rust holes here and there, but so what. If anything expensive ever happens to it (so far it's been as reliable as a hammer) I'll just haul it off to a junkyard and buy another one for $600. Well worth it to keep the salt of my Volvo's. Not that the Volvo's are so incredibly valuable that I can't dare expose them to salt, it's jsut that I want to drive them for a long time, and salt exposure puts a certain upper limit on their longevity, regardless of how well you wash them.
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic 245 + turbo