Sounding smoke alarms and a quick-thinking Burrows St workshop owner saw a car on fire rolled out of a building and extinguished before Tauranga's fire brigade arrived.

The silver Ford Falcon, which caught on fire at Mag Master Ltd this morning.

Senior station officer Phil Price says a silver Ford Falcon had been sitting inside Mag Master's Burrows Street workshop for about an hour when it caught fire about 10.45am.

'It [the car] caught fire in the electrical wiring under the dash on the driver's side,” says Phil.

'A guy working at the place heard a smoke alarm go off, went in and saw the fire in the car and was able to push it out of the building and onto the driveway.

'He was able to extinguish the fire with a dry powder extinguisher just before we arrived.”

Phil says firefighters ventilated the building and made sure the fire was out before disconnecting the car's battery.

'There was damage done to the head-lighting of the car, the dash and the interior on the driver's side.”

Mag Master's manager, who didn't want to be named, says the owner of the workshop heard the smoke alarm sound and managed to push the car out of the building.

'I'd only had the car here for about an hour. When the fire started under the dash, it was an electrical fault, and everything went off.

'The owner pushed the car out, which I'm glad of – I didn't want my workshop to go up in smoke.”

'The car is pretty well munted inside.”