It sounds like the car in question had rear disc footbrake, with ''top hat'' design parking brake via small shoes specifically for park brake...normal drum brakes stay cleanish just by normal footbrake use.

This design can easily get very corroded, especially if fitted to a proper torque converter auto which in practice almost never needs the parking brake applying for such things as hill starts etc so the drum won't get cleaned in usage...the problem here is the usual, lack of competent regular brake servicing to keep things working well.

This system is fitted to MB, BMW, Volvo, Mitsi, Subaru and a whole host of others, it works well becuase the rear disc calipers can be standard simple twin opposed piston (MB) or single piston sliding calipers, each without the complication of a parking brake mechanism built in....the downside if you can call it that is that the friction surfaces don't really get used unless the car is a manual version..

In practice i gently apply the parking brake once every couple of months when moving on my two cars with this design, and i mean gently, just enough to clean any muck or rust off the friction surface and hardly noticing any deceleration at all, and be careful if doing so with the silly little shoes found on BMW's or you'll wear them down in minutes.

This isn't a good idea on Volvos as their rather poor quality parking brake shoes tend to seperate in far too short order (2/7/9 series they aint any more sadly) and the dislodged shoe friction material can jam the whole caboodle up solidly, and expensively, they had disintegrated on my sons S60 but we replaced them no problem before anything jammed up.

I have dismantled MB's before and found the rust to be so bad on the drums that a massive channel had been worn in the shoes and correspondingly on the drum, requiring new disc/drums and new shoes, you couldn't possibly have fitted new shoes alone (disc friction area was still good) as the contact area would have been less than 30% of the total.

I like this design personally, easily and cheaply maintained, certainly better than the idiot electric parking brake, which will wihotu doubt cause (along with other stupid designs) many otherwise good cars to be prematurely scrapped, just as designed to.

Edited by gordonbennet on 12/07/2014 at 20:53

Our 60 plate Kia Ceed SW has this type of handbrake.

In 4 years of ownership we have never had an issue and have never pulled on the handbrake whilst driving to clean the pads/drums.

Not going to start carrying out dangerous manovers or worrying about a non existent problem.