KEY POINTS:
When auction-house Turners began a trial to get old polluting cars off the roads, it put few limits on an offer to collect any within 30km of its depots.
Not even a large, smelly octopus, its tentacles entangled in the wreck of a stolen car dragged out of Port Chalmers, could detract from the mission.
"It was a call to action - we said we'd take anything," said Turners Auctions chief executive Graham Roberts, whose company sells almost 80,000 vehicles a year, about a quarter of which are damaged.
That included the octopus-infested Mazda 626, which was caught up by a visiting Australian warship two years after being stolen and dumped off a wharf in Port Chalmers.
Mr Roberts was unclear about the fate of the octopus, and whether his Dunedin staff might have dined on exotic seafood for several nights after the find.
But he was pleased the car it came served with was one of 311 vehicles netted in his company's 10-week campaign to rid the roads of some of their worst polluters, while returning more than $86,000 to the owners of 238.
So much so that Turners has decided to repeat the exercise by making it a regular feature on its auction calendar.
"We'll do it from time to time - maybe once or twice a year, depending on how the demand is," he said.
Although the Mazda was well off-road, the trial included an offer by Turners to collect any old wrecks from within 30km of any of its nine damaged vehicle depots, in return for keeping any money raised from selling parts for scrap.
Alternatively, owners could bring vehicles to the depots themselves and have them auctioned by Turners without paying its standard fee of $295 plus a commission of 3 1/2 per cent.
That meant owners of the 238 vehicles brought to Turners depots pocketed an average of just over $360 without deduction, making a tidy incentive to dispose of wrecks which might otherwise be left rusting on roadsides or in backyards or paddocks - creating environmental hazards from leaking oil and general disintegration.
"I think it has cost us a bit of money but not a whole lot," Mr Roberts said.
"We found that at the end of the day it was worthwhile for us to show we are doing the right thing."
Although about 92,000 vehicles are written off annually by insurance companies, and therefore shepherded to outlets such as Turners for disposal, marketing general manager Todd Hunter said there was little accounting for a further 82,000 on which registrations had simply lapsed.
Mr Roberts said the trial, which Associate Transport Minister Judith Tizard launched in November at the company's headquarters in Panmure, was one of several potential environment projects on which Turners was working with government agencies and its customers.
One idea on which the company was consulting customers was to offer on-site emissions tests for vehicles being prepared for auction, so buyers could judge how "green" they were from stickers on their windscreens.
