Simms won't disclose how many cars his company has been selling, but a customer-service representative claims that the center has refurbished nearly 10,000 cars since it opened. With its two newer plants now up and running, one can safely estimate that iMotors's monthly volume is nearly 500 cars, with growth that has been expanding by 20% to 30% monthly, according to Simms.

The challenge for iMotors, naturally, is to make money -- and right now, the company is spending it as fast, if not faster, than it's making it. Atop any unforeseen expenses, the company has contracted with the Bechtel Group to build a dozen more refurbishing plants around the country, on an as-needed basis, each costing $10 million. By year's end, iMotors will have rented more than 50 storefronts around the country -- delivery centers, akin to rental-car counters, where customers pick up their cars. Those storefronts each cost several thousands of dollars per month to run. Tack on a growing number of workers (it has nearly 650 already), a $20 million-plus marketing campaign, and the investment iMotors makes to fully restore every car that it sells (often at a cost upward of $1,000), and even the biggest proponents of iMotors might be left scratching their heads.

Recently, iMotors began rolling out its iMotors Xpress, in which the company scours auction sites for cars that are recently off lease and that are due to arrive at auction on a predetermined day. By seizing on oversupply at the wholesale level, Simms can offer cars before their actual availability -- and presumably at a steep discount. The company also plans to exploit more fully its customer relationships by selling insurance and providing leases to customers, he explains, although those plans are at varying stages.

Is Simms overreaching? Perhaps, says Schrank, who is president of Denny Hecker's Automotive Group in Minneapolis. "I appreciate Adam's model, but out of our annual sales of 12,000 to 15,000 cars a year, maybe 1,000 come from online referrals. People visit the Net to glean the information they need. Then they come to the dealership to buy."

IMotors faces lots of competitors too, including major car manufacturers like Ford, which has already laid open a build-to-order online-sales program in two Canadian markets and like AutoNation Inc., an established used-car retailer that preceded iMotors's idea of consolidating all makes and models of used cars under one brand. AutoNation ultimately shuttered its reconditioning centers and superstores because they weren't profitable, but it now allows shoppers to search its inventory of 400 dealerships online and sells to those customers directly. Finally, iMotors has local car dealers to contend with. Such dealers might not be as Web-savvy as Simms, but they know their market well and have been selling cars for an awfully long time.

No matter. Simms believes in his own idea enough to be driving a champagne-colored 1997 Honda Accord that he bought through iMotors.com. On a recent freeway drive, he peeks at nearly every car on the road, looking for an iMotors license frame, which gets affixed to every car that his company sells. When he veers his Honda behind a truckload of used cars to get a better view, he laments that the shipment hasn't come from iMotors.

Undaunted, he declares that "the 1-year-old to 5-year-old used-car business is a $170 billion-plus industry. If we sell 4 out of every 100 of those cars, we can be a $7 billion company in revenue."

Constance Loizos (c_loizos@ msn.com) is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. Contact Adam Simms by email (adam@imotors.com).

Sidebar: Is IMotors on Course?

"Absolutely. We're talking about creating the next great consumer proposition, on the same order of magnitude as Dell revolutionizing the PC-buying experience. Right now, when you survey consumers about their used-car buying experience, it's hard to find many people who enjoy it. They can't find the cars that they want, and there's a quality of nervousness involved because they have little or no recourse. IMotors will succeed because it maintains a high quality of service, both when things go right and when they go wrong. It might not be the least expensive way to purchase a car, but price isn't everything. Most people have demonstrated, via the profitability of companies like Dell, that they are willing to pay for top quality from a trusted partner."

-- Gus Tai, general partner, Trinity Ventures, an IMotors investor

"A big question for iMotors is whether consumers are willing to pay a premium for its service. New-car buyers tend to be more specific about the make, model, and color of the car that they plan to buy. Used-car shoppers tend to be more price sensitive. Another key will be how quickly and how effectively iMotors can create a brand that stands for the best quality of used vehicles possible -- one of the few things that might compel a consumer to purchase a vehicle sight unseen. How much time the company has to build that brand is hard to say. But it is easy to say that iMotors has a lot less time today than it would have had earlier this year, before the bloom fell off the Internet rose."