Auction Direct to sell cars here

Chain to open dealership on Glenwood

RALEIGH -- A New York used-car chain plans to open a Triangle dealership with 400 vehicles and 65 employees as part of a national expansion.

Auction Direct USA of Victor, N.Y., plans to open in December at a former Hertz car sales outpost in northwest Raleigh, promising "a better alternative to the traditional car buying process."

The company buys cars in bulk at auction and then sells them to consumers at retail prices.

Showrooms feature "education walls" that help buyers understand the auction process, said Mike Guerrein, the company's director of marketing.

And they have televisions with footage of car auctions from across the country, "so you can actually see what we're paying for a car," he said.

"We like to empower our guests with information," Guerrein said.

The company sells a wide range of late-model foreign and domestic cars and trucks with clean titles. The majority of them have low miles.

Vehicles sell for an average of $13,000 each, Guerrein said.

That's 42 percent above the national average price of cars bought at auction in 2006, according to a survey conducted by the National Auto Auction Association, a Frederick, Md., trade group.

Auction Direct also buys cars and takes trade-ins, Guerrein said.

If any of its cars don't sell on the lot within 31 days, they are listed on an Internet auction site run by the company.

The Raleigh dealership is Auction Direct's first in North Carolina and fourth nationally.

The local dealership could benefit from traffic generated by visitors to CarMax, a used- car dealership chain which has a store about 1 1/2 miles northwest on Glenwood.

Auction Direct plans to operate 17 dealerships within four years, including one in Charlotte, Guerrein said.

Besides its home-state dealership, the company also has set up shop in Atlanta and Jacksonville, Fla.

The site of the Raleigh store, 7601 Glenwood Ave., was abandoned in early 2006 after Hertz decided to close almost all of its car-sales locations.

Hertz sold the 8.5-acre property, which includes an 18,000-square-foot showroom, to Oberlin Investors for about $5.5 million, according to property records filed this month with the Wake County Register of Deeds.

Auction Direct has agreed to lease the property for 15 years, according to Jim Anthony, chief executive of Raleigh real estate services firm Anthony & Co.

Anthony is a partner in Oberlin Investors.