The latest craze in online retail shopping has been the rise of “penny auction” websites. These sites tempt would-be buyers with impossibly low prices on high-end goods, more often than not electronic devices and luxury gadgets. While there is some debate (and plenty of proof) regarding the scammy nature of many of these sites, there is also the chance that you could win something very expensive for pennies on the dollar. Perhaps even a car.

Business Wire reports that Fast Penny Cars.com, a new penny auction website dedicated to cars, is offering bidders a chance to score cool rides like a 2011 Camaro SS, for under $1,000.

Sounds too good to be true? Penny auctions haven’t gotten the best reputation, but these guys are looking to change that perception. Here’s how penny auction websites work. You purchase “bidding packages” for a set amount of money, usually between 50 cents and 80 cents-per-bid. Then, when you bid on an item, your 80 cent bid adds one single cent to the price of the item. If you have the winning “bid” then you are offered the chance to purchase this item at an extremely low price.

The problem is that you’re also paying to bid, and you don’t get that money back even if you lose the auction to some young whippersnapper who snatches it at the last moment. Fast Penny Cars pledges to alleviate some of that with a credit system for the cumulative value (or percentage of the value) of the bids you placed. With each bid costing 80 cents, a 100-bid package will run you $80.

Running the math shows you how these kinds of sites can potentially make big money. At 80 cents per bid, that “$1,000 Camaro” will actually gross the auctioneers something like $80,000 as it goes from $0.01 to $1,000.00, one cent at a time. In essence, it’s a kind of raffle to see who gets the last bid in and wins the chance to buy the item in question.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Fast Penny Cars once they officially launch – expect an update after the first auctions, which are scheduled to kick off June 25th.