WAYNE'S NEW WORLD

Question: why would a guy worth $2 billion give a hoot about the sticker prices on most new cars? Answer: By chopping them down a notch, maybe he can make $2 billion more.

Meet H. Wayne Huizenga, billionaire entrepreneur extraordinaire. No introduction is needed, really. Huizenga hauled away your trash twice a week in the 1970s, treated you to a cheap date with video rentals in the 1980s and sated your craving for first downs, slap shots and strikeouts as a sports tycoon in the 1990s. It isn't possible to be a conscious adult and not have contributed to the Huizenga stash in some small way. Now the man who built what has become waste-giant WMX Technologies, video-king Blockbuster Entertainment and perhaps the biggest collection of sports properties anywhere (Miami Dolphins, Florida Panthers, Florida Marlins) wants you to make another contribution. And--gulp--this time he's thinking big.

These days Huizenga operates as chairman of a company called Republic Industries. (He sold Blockbuster to Viacom for $8.4 billion in September 1994.) And his latest scheme promises to rock the very core of the car world, which is worth $1 trillion when viewed as a series of transactions that includes new- and used-car sales, service, accessories and financing. Car businesses compose one-seventh of the economy.

Huizenga wants to institutionalize the no-haggle car purchase, spruce up car lots, give unhappy buyers full refunds, offer used-car buyers decent warranties and generally make the car-buying experience easier to stomach. These are not new ideas, but Huizenga plans to carry them out on a scale that would literally transform every aspect of car retailing. This is a glimpse of Wayne's Auto World, where the same formula that has revolutionized video and trash will be put to work on wheels.

The driver of Huizenga's new plan is a chain of used-car superstores under the name AutoNation USA. In the next few weeks Republic will complete its purchase of AutoNation and be free to pursue Huizenga's aggressive strategy. Republic is a diversified company with interests in security systems, waste removal and autos. The last, once the company acquires AutoNation, is where it expects to get most of its growth. Investors are hitching a ride. Since Huizenga took over in May 1995, Republic stock has rocketed from less than $2 to more than $30, making Wayne $750 million richer on paper.

It's widely known that Huizenga, 58, expects to increase AutoNation's current seven used-car lots to about 100 sprinkled around the U.S. by the turn of the century. What isn't widely appreciated, though, is how he hopes the used-car superstores--each planned to have 1,000 or more cars in stock, and each generating $100 million in annual revenue--will fit into his ultimate scheme. In Wayne's world, you never get attached to cars. You trade them every couple of years until they're scrap--and every stop along the way, he gets a piece of the action.

It all starts, naturally, with mint cars from the factory floor. And that is the piece to this giant puzzle that Huizenga and his brain trust at Republic are working on feverishly today. Huizenga, who built his trash and video empires via rapid acquisitions, will spend about $250 million next year to build used-car megalots from the ground up. But to complement that investment, he's about to embark on a takeover spree of new-car dealerships.