INDIANAPOLIS -

Some important landmarks are being celebrated this year in the auto auction business.  For one, it was 75 years ago that the nation’s first, Rawls Auto Auction, opened its doors. The National Auto Auction Association, meanwhile, is commemorating its 65th year.

We showcase these milestones and more in the Sept. 1-14 print edition of Auto Remarketing, which is our annual Special Convention Issue for the NAAA.

We’ve included an excerpt here from one of our pieces honoring the industry’s foundation:

Strong Connection to Industry’s Foundation Still Flows Through Auction Business

There’s a funny story Jason Hockett recently heard from his father, Mike Hockett.

When Mike was a partner at ADE in Indianapolis during the mid-1980s, there was an older man named Tom who delivered cars for the auction.

“One day my dad received a phone call from Tom saying that his car had just gone through the front window of a Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Jason said. “My dad asked Tom what happened, and Tom replied, ‘I stopped for some chicken and my car followed me in.’”

You’re likely to find yarns like these spun throughout the history of the auction industry, a business full of stories of colorful characters, personality and life, but also rich tradition and entrepreneurial innovation.

Perhaps at the heart of that history is Jimmy Rawls, whose father J.M. Rawls founded what is considered to be the nation’s first auto auction 75 years ago.

Jimmy is the owner of Rawls Auto Auction in Leesville, S.C., which celebrated its 75th anniversary this summer, and is someone Black Book vice president and North American auction director Tim West calls a “phenomenal operator” and “one of the best” in the business.

“One of the benefits that dealers who come to Rawls Auto Auction have is that Jimmy’s a car guy,” said West, who has know Jimmy for 29 years. “He’s one of them. You can see by his collection of older cars that he’s a car guy; he thinks like they do; he buys and sells cars himself.

“So, he understands the position they’re in and certainly understands the business from that standpoint.”

Now, about that car collection of Jimmy’s.

Such classics as a 1938 Ford Woody and a 1939 Mercury were among the memorabilia adorning the lobby space of Rawls Auto Auction when Auto Remarketing paid a visit on the day of its 75th anniversary sale.

A yearbook’s worth of photographs going back more than a handful of decades to tell the visual story of the auction wrapped the walls of the lobby, and a quote from 1957 was found in at least a couple spots throughout the facility.

“Be wise, sell on today’s market,” it read.

While the origins of today’s market first emerged before Jimmy was born, it’s a story that’s part of his lineage and one with which he’s greatly familiar.

J.M. Rawls, who was already in the car business, got the idea of selling used cars via the auction method from attending livestock sales. Rawls Auto Auction would then take flight in 1938.

“We had a lot of dealers that lived in our little area (of South Carolina) that went up north and bought cars and brought them back to sell. They felt like they had a market, because cars were real scarce pre-war,” Jimmy said, referring to the years just prior to World War II. “So they’d have a sale on Tuesday, run them through the building and sell them.”

That building the sale began in was a downtown theater building with just one lane.

The auction itself is at a different location today and includes seven lanes, but that original theater is still there today, Jimmy said.

“It was a used-car garage and sales … So, they had the idea for (the auction), and they went on one side and busted a door out. They went on the other side, busted that one out to where the car could come straight through,” he said.

The auction block was set up at the back of the building, and the cars were parked out on the railroad track.

“When they finished with the auction, they would close the doors back and it was a repair garage,” he added.

In the earliest days, Jimmy said, folks were curious if the concept of selling a car via auction would even work. Some thought J.M. was “crazy,” and others got behind him.

To market the auction, J.M. got a car, put his auction’s name on it, and then traveled around to spread the word to dealers. He had his most success with dealers out of Georgia.

“The first few sales weren’t very good; they had about 25 cars,” Jimmy said. “They’d re-run them about four times, so they could say they had a hundred.

“But it built up really fast. It wasn’t a year before they were running 300 or 400 cars a week,” he added.

Not to mention, the sales rate was in the high 90s, Jimmy said, noting, “Dealers were coming from ways away just to get these cars.”

It wouldn’t be long before more auto auctions sprouted up, and just 10 years later, the National Auto Auction Protection Association — the precursor to the National Auto Auction Association — was formed.

For the entire story and complete coverage of our Special Convention Issue, stay tuned for the Sept. 1-14 issue of Auto Remarketing.

Among our other features will be a spotlight on the nation’s auctions and their photos from the past year, the industry’s rich history, promising future, the new NAAA president, the industry’s top commercial consignors and much more.