Peter Griffin: Race hotting up for online auto sales

It was in the early 90s, when Nissan Primeras and Toyota Celicas were coveted motor vehicles, that I attended my first car auction.

I went with my brother, a car dealer, to Turners Auctions' massive Penrose warehouse.

It brimmed with fresh imports with letters and numbers scrawled in white marker across their windows. This was the dealer auction, closed to the public. Men stood around impassively, holding oversized chequebooks and, in today's terms, oversized mobile phones as a fleet of cars went under the hammer.

The most hi-tech bit was when the sale price popped up on the big electronic board behind the fast-talking auctioneer.

Now Turners, which must have made a killing during the golden age of the Japanese import, is embracing the internet in a bid to stay competitive. It will soon launch Turners Live, in which the dealer and public auctions are simulcast on the web so you can sit back in the comfort of your home or office and watch the auction via a webcast.

Bids made on the floor at Penrose or any of Turners' other locations will compete with bids placed on the internet. The auctioneer will put all the bids on the big electronic board but many bidders will see them on their computer screens.

Simply let your broadband internet connection keep you in the bidding loop.

We'll have to wait and see what Turners comes up with for the $160,000 it's investing in its web venture, but there's no reason it shouldn't work.

The internet is already home to many car auctions and while my brother still makes monthly pilgrimages to Osaka to kick the tyres of potential imports, many dealers are placing orders for imports with the click of a mouse. The public can buy imports online and cut out the dealers but, for the domestic market, TradeMe has become the major force for online car auctions.

TradeMe general manager Sam Morgan says 40,000 cars were sold through the site's auctions and classifieds last year and he believes there's scope for that to grow "two to three times" this year.

Turners sold 80,000 cars last year but has been around a lot longer than TradeMe.

Morgan says Turners Live is typical of traditional bricks-and-mortar businesses trying to adapt to the internet. He points out that some major dealers who previously sold a lot of cars through Turners are now advertising them on TradeMe.

The competition between the old player and the web incumbent will be fierce.

And Morgan is in no doubt as to why the online auction model works so well for dealers and the public - cost cutting.

"It's not so important in the boom times but you look to knock out cost when there's a crunch,"he says.

There are less trips to Japan for the dealers and lower fees and better access to information for consumers.

And if we're lucky, cheaper cars.