Normal rust spots include the rear passenger floors (crawl under the car and check) and the places where the rear wheel arches meet the body (you'll see it in the far corners of the trunk).

The interior does not strike me as "wonderful" though it's usable as-is, which isn't bad.

The wheels are neither original nor valuable, though they do provide good practical shoes. The tires look bigger than stock, which is good (the stock tires were far too small for modern traffic) and they're good name-brand tires, which is a good sign...

Take it up past 50 in 3rd gear on a mild downgrade. Foot off the gas, coast in gear with the engine revved and your foot off the gas for five or ten seconds, then step on it. How much blue smoke comes out? None, great. A little, not great but normal for an older engine. Lots, it's engine time.

The condition of the engine is of major importance. I would expect that the engine got a ring-and-valve job at around 100k, and that they didn't re-bore it or use new pistons. Which means your next rebuild is about 30k away and will be a full bore job. I would expect some evidence of excessive blowby in this engine at this mileage; you'll see it when you take the top off the air cleaner: if there's significant blowby you'll see oil inside the air cleaner housing where the crankcase breather meets. If there's no oil coming out of that, hey, very good sign. Look inside the oil filler and you can see how much oil goo has burnt onto the inside of the motor; the cleaner the better. Anyway, these symptoms are pretty normal and you can drive for a long time with these symptoms... but they can remind the owner that the engine is old and should not be described as fabulous unless it is actually a recent build, which it almost certainly isn't.

The claim of rebuilt transmission sounds like baloney to me. Manual transmissions seldom require rebuilding before 200k. If it's not noisy, it's probably fine. Try to shift into 1st while the car is rolling, to make sure the 1st gear syncros are working. Not that it's a big deal to have an unsynchronized first gear, but it's nice not to be surprised. Anyway, the tranny if currently working is probably the least of your worries.

If the e-brake doesn't work, expect either a bad rear axle seal or the need of a not-terribly-easy-to-find linkage part. Don't let him trivialize this; if it were that easy to fix he'd have fixed it.

The fuel gage sender costs around $160 for a new one and used ones are hard to find, FYI.

Expect an inch or two of play in the steering; it's normal for the type. A little rear end whine is also pretty normal.