Does Adam Simms Have a Sale?

"No scratches, no dings, no dents," Adam Simms promises. "No scuffs, no spots, no smells. Anything that needs to be repaired or replaced within the next 12 months or 12,000 miles, we're going to take care of." He sounds a lot like a used-car salesman. And several years ago, that's exactly what he was. But now the 38-year-old Simms is chief executive officer of iMotors.com, an Internet-based retailer that has huge ambitions for changing the ways that Americans buy secondhand cars. Simms also faces huge challenges: specifically, selling his business model in a difficult climate for online retailers in general -- and for Web-based automobile retailers in particular.

Not that he has any doubts about how things will turn out. "There are two things to know about me," he says. "I understand how to create something with potential, and I always have an incredible impact on whatever I'm focused on."

First, the vision. In Simms's world, there is no reason anymore for shoppers to visit a classic used-car lot, where they might see a selection of 150 or so cars that forces them to figure out what comes closest to their desires -- and then to dicker over price. Instead, he wants shoppers to go to his company's Web site and request whatever they want. A white 1998 Chevy Prizm with a CD player? No problem. A 1997 BMW 540i with fewer than 41,000 miles on it? All a customer has to do is ask. Instantly, iMotors will quote a no-haggling price for that model. At that moment, the company won't have the specific car in stock. In fact, it carries essentially no inventory whatsoever. But it does have a pipeline into tens of thousands of sources of late-model used cars. Within minutes after customers place a request, iMotors can start tracking down an exact match. Once it finds the right car, iMotors can take possession of that car, refurbish it, and then deliver it to an iMotors storefront located near the customer's home.

Each step, Simms believes, is a major improvement over the ways the used-car market traditionally works. And as much as he champions the virtual virtues of the Internet, he contends that his biggest breakthroughs are iMotors's physical refurbishing plants. They are behemoths, starting with a 90,000-square-foot operation in Elk Grove, California, just outside Sacramento. Situated amid a sea of flattened wheat fields, two propane tanks, and a rusty railroad track, the facility houses nearly 200 employees who filter in and out to wash cars, to replace tires, and to operate high-tech paint booths.

On a recent afternoon, the company's Elk Grove facility had just accepted delivery of a green 1997 Subaru Legacy and a cranberry-colored, 1999 six-speed Camaro Z28. John Draper, 41, a technician who previously worked at a Precision Auto garage in northern California, has already bent his attention toward the Camaro. "The passenger-side window squeaks, but the interior looks really good," he tells Simms, who has begun nosing through an inspection log in which Draper has been writing his findings.

Satisfied, Simms visits the upholstery corner of the plant, where four men labor over a Plymouth minivan. Two employees stitch a spot of fabric into the minivan's backseat, mending a cigarette burn. Looking at their handiwork, Simms beams. "A lot of body shops use sprays to fill those gaps," he says. But this seat's fabric looks seamless.

Now, for the reality check. This has been a brutal year for almost every type of Internet-based retailing, and the online car business is no exception. Nervous investors have slashed by more than two-thirds the stock prices of publicly traded companies such as AutoWeb.com and autobytel.com Inc., which sell new and used cars. Meanwhile, in a wave of consolidation, autobytel bought CarSmart.com, and DriveOff.com Inc. drove itself straight into the arms of MSN CarPoint. Industry analysts have begun questioning whether newly minted Internet car retailers will ever be able to achieve profitability -- or whether, even if profitable, they can possibly eke out decent returns as traditional dealers and car companies get savvy about using the Web as a business tool. In the most immediate jolt to Simms's own ambitions, he was forced this summer to lay off 100 employees at the Elk Grove facility.

Even one of Simms's former bosses, used-car executive Ken Hall, questions how many buyers will rely on a company like iMotors. "Adam has a nice niche business," says Hall, president of Hall Auto World Inc. in Hampton Roads, Virginia. "But most folks don't have the car of their dreams firmly in mind, nor do they want to order it online."